Lady Gaga is the queen of the opera house at TD Garden – The Boston Globe

The last time Lady Gaga played in Boston, she packed more than 37,200 people at Fenway Park and broke the record for the most attended single concert in the area. On his first tour, in support of his 2016 album “Joanne,” he sold out the stadium two nights in a row. So what’s his current “Mayhem Ball” doing at TD Garden, a fraction of the size, when the next logical step is Gillette?

Sunday night, the answer was evident in the first dramatic minutes of the show.

It was a clear “shock-pop” scene: the majestic parade stage slid down the middle, revealing a 25-foot figure draped in red fabric. Gaga’s petite frame popped out of the red pile of “dress” like a cake topper. From his home, he created macabre pop gems: “Bloody Mary,” “Abracadabra,” and “Judas” (a selection on Palm Sunday). Behind him, an even taller design imitated an opera house, with vines and crests, and burning flames.

Now imagine if the baroque hellfire had been reduced to a spot for some poor soul in the last row of the stadium, still keeping their eyes fixed even with the help of the Jumbotron.

As fans at the first of two shows in Boston discovered Sunday, Gaga’s “Mayhem Ball” is as much a theater production as a concert, and the show justifies its small venue with every detail planned. The pop singer’s 2025 album “MAYHEM” earned its title (and rave reviews) with dance pop and rock, but its touring companion is a five-act story that ties together in a way only the Drama Queen could.

You don’t have to understand the story to enjoy a show from one of the few living artists who can sing “I’m fallin’ over in my 9-inch heels” without licking the hyperbole.

However, Gaga was down to earth when necessary: ​​turning “The Edge of Glory” into a powerful ballad solo on her piano, proudly taking the curtain call without makeup, and gratefully receiving a birthday cake from a fan (which prompted the crowd to sing “Happy Birthday” at the artist’s first show in the 40s).

Often, he indulged in his theatrics. For “Paparazzi,” Gaga walked down the catwalk in chrome stilettos, a sleek cape trailing behind her, which ended up inside a prismatic canopy. He stepped into a sandbox full of bones to create “Perfect Celebrity,” Nine Inch Nails—an explosion of star rage. During “Shallow,” her song with Bradley Cooper from the 2018 remake of “A Star Is Born,” she rode a boat through a foggy hurricane, “Phantom of the Opera”-style.

But Gaga is not the only player in this drama. The show pits the pop star against the “queen of mayhem,” a hidden figure of Gaga’s dark side who would occasionally hold a grudge, screaming “bring her to me!” In a pre-recorded video above the show, Gaga recites a poem that ends ominously with “She and I will find a way to live as twins / But I’ll know, if in the end, the queen of chaos wins.” The conflict is about public self-reliance, from the way the leading lady was disparaging about her image, to the constant mixing of sticks and clothes (Gaga broke her hip due to stress in 2013, which can be said to be when much of this darkness began to boil).

I will not spoil the decision. But before Gaga went into the final act to perform “Bad Romance,” bleary-eyed, wearing a feathered dress and a headdress that resembled a blood-soaked cape, she and the tragic queen finally came to one conclusion: “We’re monsters.

They said this well, and their stories don’t.

LADY GAGA

At TD Garden, Sunday, March 29. Again Monday, March 30.

Victoria Wasylak can be reached at victoria.wasylak@globe.com. Follow her on Bluesky at VickiWasylak.bsky.social.