Lady Gaga opens Las Vegas residency as Oscar favorite

When Lady Gaga kicks off her “Enigma” residency Friday at Park Theater, she’ll do so as a Golden Globe nominee, Screen Actors Guild nominee and multiple Grammy nominee, all for her work in “A Star Is Born.”

The wave of publicity from her first American concerts in more than a year surely can’t hurt with Oscar nominations, which will be open from Jan. 7 to 14, 2019.

It’s almost as though she planned it this way.

The Golden Globes (Jan. 6), Grammys (Feb. 10) and Oscars (Feb. 24) fall during weeks she isn’t scheduled to perform in Las Vegas. In a break from her typical Thursday-Saturday-Sunday schedule, though, she’s off Jan. 27, the night of the SAG Awards.

Academy Award nominations won’t be revealed until Jan. 22, but numerous websites that track this sort of thing have her favored to take home her first Oscar for her performance as Ally, a waitress and aspiring singer who’s so insecure about her looks that she performs in drag bars, buried beneath nearly as much makeup as some of the guys.

She’s the top pick among most prognosticators, over the likes of Olivia Colman for “The Favourite,” Melissa McCarthy for “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and Glenn Close for “The Wife.”

Many of those same sites also list “A Star Is Born,” which has been rocking the box office since October — it’s topped the $200 million mark in the U.S. alone — as the favorite to win best picture.

“Shallow,” one of the numerous songs Gaga wrote for the movie, also is considered a shoo-in for an Academy Award nomination, if not an outright win.

She was previously nominated for an Oscar in 2016 for her song “Til It Happens to You” from “The Hunting Ground.”

Lady Gaga has dates scheduled for “Enigma” and her “Jazz & Piano” shows through Nov. 9, 2019.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.