Back in São Paulo, Tarja Turunen celebrated the many successes of her solo career in a charismatic and intimate show with the audience last Saturday, the 23rd. The nearly two-hour performance featured special guests and few nods to Nightwish songs.
The return to Brazil happened a little over a year after her last tour in the country, which took place in 2022, when she performed at Tokio Marine Hall in São Paulo. And, even before finishing the three shows celebrating her career hits in the country, she already has her tickets booked for her return: after the sold-out show in Porto Alegre last Friday, the 22nd, Tarja confirmed her return for March 2024, this time alongside Marko Hietala , a colleague from her Nightwish days.
But while that nostalgic reunion hasn't happened yet, Tarja's performance in São Paulo, the second of the Living The Dream Tour in Brazil, has a firm focus on the artist's prolific solo career, widely supported by loyal fans who were already chanting "Tarja, Tarja!" even before the show started, interrupted only by the lively announcements and commercials shown in the minutes before the performance.
At 10:40 PM, the band took the stage to warm applause, but nothing compared to the love the audience reserved for the star of the night. Dressed in the first of her three outfits for the evening, a beautiful black dress, Tarja appeared on stage with the energy she would maintain until the very last moment, smiling and eager to interact with the audience, who had already begun the night enthusiastically singing "Eye of the Storm."
Throughout the entire performance, the fans responded very well to Tarja's requests for applause, shouts, or raised arms, but perhaps the combination of the city's heat and the packed concert hall explains the various moments in which the audience chose only to watch, saving their bursts of excitement for responding to the artist's interactions or their favorite songs, as was the case with "Diva" a little later on. Despite the negative connotation often attributed to the term, it was the word chosen for yet another chorus from the audience, ending the track with shouts of "Tarja, I love you!".
The beautiful acoustic segment of the performance took place after “Naiad”. Alone on stage, accompanied only by her powerful voice and piano, Tarja mesmerized the audience like a siren when she thanked the fans for “still being here” since her first visit to the country and played two songs in this format: “Oasis” and “You and I”, with the band returning for “Shadow Play”.
The second act of the show, so to speak, was the most lively of all and featured the first guest appearance of the evening with the presence of opera singer Thiago Arancam , a tenor known for starring in The Phantom of the Opera during the musical's run in Brazil in 2018. His participation in "The Phantom of the Opera" brought a piece of the play to the stage, with the musician embodying the protagonist of the play and book himself, masked and in cape, demanding that the angel of music sing more and more, which Tarja obeyed as dictated by the script.
Despite being immortalized in the singer's voice during her time with Nightwish, the song is, ultimately, one of the band's covers and not an original piece. This is already a characteristic of the singer's tours, but celebrating her career hits raised hopes of classics like "Nemo" being included in the setlist, something that didn't happen – and wasn't missed, as the powerful sequence with "I Walk Alone" and "Victim of Ritual" proved.
After that moment of ecstasy, Tarja left the stage for her final costume change and reappeared in a beautiful silver dress during "Innocence," once again inspiring the audience to maintain an enthusiasm as tireless as hers. Despite her image of class and poise, the muse of symphonic metal melted into smiles, made faces, jumped, headbanged, and danced the entire time, far from the untouchable prima donna image that many try to attribute to women in music – including Tarja herself.
Past midnight and heading towards two hours, the show entered its final stretch with another great sequence: “Dead Promises” and “Until My Last Breath,” sung enthusiastically by the audience. To close the night, and without much formality in introducing the guest who is already a regular, Rafael Bittencourt took to the stage to play the much-celebrated “Over the Hills and Far Away” with the singer, repeating a long-standing partnership on stage: the Angra guitarist has already collaborated with Tarja on tracks and shows, in addition to the Finnish singer's participation in the DVD Angels Cry: 20th Anniversary Tour , singing “Stand Away” and “Wuthering Heights” with the Brazilian band.
Having completed more than 35 shows in the country in her solo career alone, Tarja's performance in São Paulo this year perfectly illustrates the reason for her immense success here. Beyond a voice and a history that has forever marked symphonic metal, the artist has made a name for herself entirely through her own merit, whether through charisma or the construction of a strong solo career beloved by the fanbase she acquired in her youth.
Our contributor Wellington Penilha was also at the show and captured the night with exclusive photos. Check out the gallery below.
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