Italian singer to perform three gigs in 24 hours
Italian singer Laura Pausini is to perform three concerts in 24 hours between the US and Europe later this month to celebrate her 30th anniversary in the music business.
The Grammy Award winner will play New York’s Apollo Theater at 6pm ET (midnight CET) on Sunday 26 February before flying to Spain for a gig at The Music Station in Madrid, Spain at 3pm CET the following day, finishing up in her homeland at Milan’s Teatro Carcano at 11pm CET, presented by Friends and Partners.
The free admission #LAURA30 shows mark 30 years to the day since Pausini triumphed in the newcomer artists’ category at the Sanremo Music Festival with La Solitudine (The Loneliness) in February 1993.
“This is also the retelling of my journey because I got started in Italy, then I went to Spain, and after I went to the United States”
According to Variety, Pausini will perform 10 songs in each city, representing each decade of her career.
“This is a tour that, let’s say, begins and ends on the same day,” says Pausini. “This is also the retelling of my journey because I got started in Italy, then I went to Spain, and after I went to the United States. I had to pick three cities in each country. Initially, it was going to be Miami for the US but I would not have arrived on time to Madrid and be able to do this whole 24-hour trip.”
In 2006, Pausini became the first Italian female artist to win a Grammy Award, with her Escucha LP taking the prize for Best Latin Pop Album. She was also nominated for an Oscar in 2021 for Best Original Song with Io sì (Seen) from the film The Life Ahead, which was also crowned the first Italian language song to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.
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A year in the live of Laura Pausini
… To celebrate her remarkable year, Adam Woods talks to the team that has taken her spectacular Simili production around the world
In summer 2007, in the pouring rain, Italian star Laura Pausini became the first woman ever to headline Milan’s San Siro Stadium. Two years later, following the devastating earthquake in the central Italian town of L’Aquila, she returned, with 42 other female singers, to raise money for local charities.
This summer, she managed to raise the stakes again, with two nights at the 80,018-capacity San Siro as part of a full-scale tour of Italian stadiums – the first two-night San Siro stand and the first Italian stadium tour for a female artist.
Acknowledging her record-breaking stadium shows in Milan, Pausini tells IQ: “Coming back there this year was amazing – two nights in a row. I was freaking out until the moment I started singing on that enormous stage. I felt that I would be able to embrace all, just like the shape of the stage I drew for this tour.”
Pausini’s was the first two-night San Siro stand and the first Italian stadium tour for a female artist
On her first night at the ‘Meazza’, Pausini made an appropriately weighty dedication from the stage: “Questo concerto è contro la violenza sulle donne” (“This concert is against violence towards women”). After 23 years on top, Pausini remains a major star, and like all such artists, everything she does needs to make a point.
The tour that followed went on to do the same. After five Italian shows, and across two further legs, Pausini toured what you might call the Pausini-speaking world, whirling through North and South American arenas before a set of European dates. For anyone unfamiliar with the 70 million-selling Pausini and her regular world tours, the route is a remarkable one, only partly explained by the fact that she has released both Italian and Spanish versions of eight of her nine most recent albums.
Read the rest of this feature in issue 68 of IQ Magazine.
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