They hadn't come for an evening at the theatre.

Nevertheless, Lady Gaga gave her fifty thousand fans a classic drama in the sold-out Düsseldorf Arena at the start of her world tour.

Only the catastrophe left her out.

That was a good thing, because the audience that came to the huge football arena that Sunday evening wanted to have fun and celebrate an exceptional figure in pop culture.

It was a colourful, relaxed multi-generational mix that seemed to have walked here on the Rhine straight from the last Christopher Street Day.

Fortuna Düsseldorf had agreed to start the season with an away game as an exception - in order to free up their stadium for the New York singer.

It's not every day that you experience the start of a world tour with only fourteen dates, before Stockholm, Paris, London, Toronto, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Like a film by Fritz Lang

Rumors are already bubbling up in the long queues: Bradley Cooper, with whom Lady Gaga performed her song "Shallow" in "A Star is Born" (and for which she received an Oscar), will probably appear on stage.

Others know from a reliable source that Beyoncé has already landed in Düsseldorf to perform "Telephone" together with the 36-year-old colleague.

In the end, however, others suspected that only the laughing Armin Laschet would be seen in the background again, so that he could live his immortal fifteen seconds of fame again in his former state capital.

The chunky set in expressionistic gray seems to have been borrowed from a Fritz Lang film, and when the lights go out at 9:12 p.m. and a countdown begins, what the Grammy and Oscar-winning singer and actress (“ House of Gucci") never thought it would happen again: a live performance of the eccentric drama queen Lady Gaga in all her power, splendor and glory.

And she is never a girl or a girl or a weak woman, but always the powerful, unfathomable lady who rules the game all alone.

Your game.

Just a few hours before the concert, in the backstage room, she addressed her audience directly via Instagram, reporting on self-doubt, illness and dark moments - and on the strength and color that her fans gave her as an antidote.

And that obviously didn't fail to have an effect.

Funny obscene texts

With a prelude to her number one hits "Bad Romance", "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", with which she has established her world fame since 2008, she not only tears all viewers off their colorful plastic seats after seven minutes, but also reminds them still quickly to the standards and unmistakable peculiarities that she installed and shaped as one of the most successful musicians of all: from the catchy nonsense scats in "Bad Romance" ("Rah, rah, ah-ah-ah / Roma, roma-ma / Gaga, ooh-la-la"), her provocative yet menacing signature moves with long-clawed fingernails to her comically obscene lyrics, such as in "LoveGame": "Let's have some fun, this beat is sick / I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”