Lady Gaga resets ‘Chromatica’ party; Strip residency on hold

We continue to consider Lady Gaga a Las Vegas Strip headliner, though she has not headlined at Park MGM since February and has no dates onsale. But we do expect her back at Park Theater on a timeline largely controlled by COVID-19.

Until then, Gaga released “Chromatica,” her sixth album, on Friday. She had scheduled a listening party for her fans Friday, but shut down that plan as protests erupted across the country after the death of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died in Minneapolis police custody on Monday.

Gaga posted her plan to reschedule Friday morning on her social-media pages: “As much as I want to listen to Chromatica together as a global group of kindness punks right now, our kindness is needed for the world today. I’m going to postpone our listening session right now and encourage you all to take this time to register to vote and raise your voice.”

She followed with a separate post, “I’m so glad the album is bringing you some joy, because that’s what I always wanted it to do. We’ll reschedule this very soon.”

Gaga’s album has been the focus of speculation for months. “Chromatica” is a place, a planet. The album is a dance party on this fictional locale, which was revealed originally by the album’s first single, “Stupid Love.” The follow-up, “Rain On Me,” is a collaboration with Ariana Grande.

Collabs abound on the release with contributions from Elton John (“Sine From Above”) and the K-pop outfit Blackpink (“Sour Candy”).

Gaga’s final pre-COVID date at Park Theater was Feb. 1. Her dates in May have been postponed. “Chromatica,” too, was knocked off schedule because of the pandemic; its original release date was April 10.

Cirque du sold, eh?

Cirque du Soleil’s $200 millon bailout is not universally applauded in its home country.

Columnist Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette, covering Cirque du Soleil’s home province of Quebec, has skewered the Quebec government’s $200 million loan to the Montreal-based production company.

Quebec Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced the loan by referring to possible outside interests buying the company, saying, “The Cirque is too important for Quebec to let it be bought by a foreign company that will then move the head office out of Quebec.”

The government holds an option to buy the company outright if it does decide to sell.

But the column published Thursday in the Gazette outlines the current consortium of investors in Cirque, the Las Vegas Strip’s predominant production company.

“The Cirque is already owned by a foreign company. The main shareholder of the Cirque du Soleil is TPG Capital, previously known as Texas Pacific Group, a San Francisco-based private equity firm controlled by two American billionaires, David Bonderman and James Coulter,” the columnist states. “TPG owns a 55-percent stake in the Cirque. The second-largest shareholder is China’s Fosun Capital Group, which controls 25 per cent of the shares.”

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Quebec pension fund, is a minority investor with 20 percent of the company. TPG is the primary operator in Cirque’s business model.

“So why is our taxpayer’s money going to help out American billionaires?” the column asks.

Cirque founder Guy Laliberté went public on Sunday with his plans to buy back the company. It took the Quebec government two days to throw its support behind the company’s current owners, effectively tossing an obstacle in Laliberté’s path.

“The bottom line is that ever since the TPG-led consortium bought the Cirque from Laliberté in 2015 for a cool $1 billion, the magic has been lost,” Kelly writes. “The Cirque has spent $550 million since 2015, buying the Blue Man Group and refreshing its Las Vegas shows, and that’s one of the main reasons it’s currently crippled with around $1 billion in debt.”

Cirque’s financial viability is crucial to Las Vegas’s tourism business and long-held claim to be the entertainment capital of the world. The company runs six productions on the Strip. When it shut down because of COVID-19, more than 1,300 artists and staffers were laid off.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His PodKats! podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.