U2 kicks off a series of concerts at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas

A new concert hall, MSG Sphere, opened with a concert by U2 on the territory of the Venetian Las Vegas casino-resort. Igor Gavrilov believes that the artists performing here now need to try very hard to be noticed against the backdrop of a grandiose spherical video projection.

The “Sphere” was built relatively quickly, considering that the start of its construction was announced in 2018, and it was planned to open in 2021, but there were still a couple of years of pandemic. The development was carried out by the architectural company Populous, whose credits include the Emirates and Wembley stadiums in London, the home arena of the New York Yankees, the main court of Wimbledon and the Fisht stadium in Sochi.

The Sphere stands can accommodate 18.6 thousand people. The site is intended primarily for audiovisual programs that combine the effect of a planetarium dome projection, the scope of IMAX and a screen resolution of 260 million pixels. The Sphere has the world’s largest LED screen, its area is 54 square meters. m. In the 112 m high hall you can create artificial wind or broadcast smells. The construction budget was initially $1.2 billion, but ended up being $2.3 billion. Thus, today it is the most expensive entertainment facility in Las Vegas.

The first images from U2 concerts leave the feeling that something is missing. This something is mountains of speakers. They are simply not needed here. There are 160 thousand sound sources constantly in the arena.

The first impressions of what the sphere is like came when director Darren Aronofsky posted a video on social media from a screening of his film Postcard from Earth. The film was created specifically for the Sphere and will be shown here constantly. Even on amateur video, the grandiose projection was breathtaking. The viewer here is like a blade of grass at the feet of an elephant.

Musical life in the Sphere also began with giants. U2 is the world’s premier band for cutting-edge technical solutions. On the 1997 Popmart tour, they decided that there could only be one sound source on stage, and hung all the speakers in the center of the stage, leaving the rest to the screen. And on the “360’” tour (2009–2011), they created a round rotating stage with a full view under the heel of a giant iron spider. Designer Willie Williams, who has worked on U2 tours since 1983, was responsible for the show at the Sphere. In recent years, in terms of concert scenography, the group lost primacy to ABBA with their high-tech show “ABBA Voyage” (see “Kommersant” dated June 1, 2022), but in the new show the Irish made up for the gap, and not only in the number of pixels on the screen.

The show “U2:UV Achtung Baby” focuses on the album “Achtung Baby” (1991), featuring all 12 songs on the album. For its time, the show in support of “Achtung Baby” was also innovative. During the then-Zoo TV Tour, U2 made fun of television and themselves, played random fragments of programs on dozens of screens, hung painted cars on chains, staged prank calls, and lead singer Bono had several stage images prepared for this program.

There is little humor in U2:UV Achtung Baby, and all revolutionary decisions are recorded once and for all in a programmed video projection. At the very beginning of the show, the audience seems to be inside a huge concrete ball, perhaps the Death Star from Star Wars, but when U2 appear on stage to the sounds of the song “Zoo Station”, the ball “bursts at the seams”, and through the growing cracks sunlight breaks through. In The Fly, a sphere made up of numbers, much like in The Matrix, suddenly turns into a cube. In “Even Better Than The Real Thing” the diversity, saturation and variability of the video sequence are reminiscent of another film – “Everything everywhere and at once”. During the performance of “Mysterious Ways,” the musicians are limited to broadcasting their own images on the screen, but now they can be viewed in the smallest detail.

One of the most powerful effects of the show is when the dome seems to disappear, or rather, a picture is broadcast onto it, and the audience seems to find themselves on the podium right in the middle of the city, and then in the Nevada desert. It’s truly breathtaking when the sun rises over the desert to the first chords of The Edge’s guitar from “Where The Streets Have No Name.” In this great song, the analogy between sound and image is obvious and straightforward, but for the first time it is embodied on such a large scale and masterfully. The highlight of the program is the song “With Or Without You,” which places the band and the audience in a piece of amber or ice with representatives of the earth’s fauna frozen in it.

U2 ended the first evening at the Sphere with the song “Beautiful Day,” which included fragments of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Blackbird”. This was a greeting to Paul McCartney, who was present at the premiere. He sat in the podium next to Jon Bon Jovi, Jeff Bezos and LeBron James.

And Bono dedicated the song “All I Want Is You” to drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who was unable to take part in the Las Vegas series of concerts due to the consequences of surgery. In 1976, it was Larry Mullen Jr. placed an advertisement in a Dublin school: “Drummer looking for musicians to form a band.” Fans will long debate U2’s decision to play Vegas without their bandmate. He took part in the recording of the new single “Atomic City”, but is still not ready for concert work. He was replaced on stage by Bram van den Berg from the Dutch band Krezip.

U2’s performances at the Sphere are scheduled until December 16, but the venue’s owners believe the show here has potential for at least two years. The public has a controversial attitude towards this kind of work; for a touring star it is rather a sign of greed and weakness. Especially in the case of U2, for whom world tours are an important part of the legend. The price for visiting a show at the Sphere starts at $165, but such tickets, of course, are almost sold out, and for October 5, for example, there were only a couple of tickets left for $500. Fans around the world can only swallow tears of envy for those who have that kind of money and an American visa.