At 9:35 p.m. this Saturday, the first of autumn 2023, Isabel Pantoja has returned. For ordinary mortals this would remain as just another phrase about another singer, but it has been the beginning of the tour that celebrates half a century on the stages of Seville, and above all in her homeland, and above all in front of thousands of unconditional fans supporting her as if it were someone in your family singing in the living room.
It had just gotten dark over the La Cartuja stadium, a short walk from the Triana where it was born “twenty-something springs ago”, when the orchestra covered the exit to the stage of a plethora of Pantoja, with a festive boat-neckline with beige tones and a flowered skirt, the kind that only traditional copleras know how to wear, the ones that fill stadiums with 40 musicians or flamenco clubs with a guitarist.
“Isabel, my name is Isabel, Isabel…” —and thousands of throats have shouted Pantoja!—. The choir has been good for the artist, because singing with tears in her eyes can’t be easy. She realized for more than three hours that tonight was not just any concert. She has sighed to be able to say good night and has spoken to people as if she were in the living room of her house with some friends.
Having saved the problems with her headset, which in the first songs has made her put her hand on her right ear more than necessary, Isabel, more Pantoja than ever, has walked her full skirt and her wavy hair around the stage while the orchestra performs it. continued, showing, yes, that the concert opened the tour. “The live is what it has, because here nothing comes from anything recorded,” she said when her voice did not match the piano for a moment.
With new arrangements adapted for the night in Embrujá por tu Quiero, and with the evidence that in the song she moves like no one else, as if she were born to bring the echoes of Concha Piquer to the times of Artificial Intelligence, Isabel Pantoja has reviewed his career from his first albums until the day before yesterday. By the way, her voice, her voice, her tones, her harmonies…, everything sounds in her throat like a CD, the same as she has always sounded, no matter how many vicissitudes her life has experienced. has placed him on her personal path.
Tears when remembering his father and mother in Here I was born: “Chiquetete, my father / was from Cádiz / my mother was from Seville / good hand in hand”; choirs from the public in ‘El Señorito’, from her sixth album, and it seemed incredible that young people knew her repertoire from the late 70s and early 80s. But the thing is, she is Isabel Pantoja, and on the day of her 80th birthday Julio Iglesias seemed to claim his place as the “other” great of Spanish music, but active.
The concert is going on, the Sevillanas arrive. Sevillanas sung by Isabel Pantoja in Seville. In this paragraph little more can be added. So that.
Before, he had regretted that Barcelona, ??shouting, fired Carmen Amaya, and then stopped in a medley of four songs from Marinero de Luces, the album written by José Luis Perales so that he could completely become Pantoja again after the death of Paquirri. . “Today I want to confess that I am a little tired,” Isabel sings, before moving from Perales to Juan Gabriel to gloss the Virgen del Rocío and confess that, more than ever, tonight in Seville her soul has fallen in love.
And there was still a walk through Mexico with the mariachi Los Tenampas, who are from Navarre, yes, another fight with the headset, or giving it your all in Hold me very tight, a song that only a throat like yours can reach in all its tones. , fruit of the hands of Alberto Aguilera Valadez. Not even Miranda’s goal for Betis that earned a Copa del Rey in the goal that was eliminated to set the stage tonight raised an ovation like that of that song.
The chronicle of the night could not ignore that Shirley Bassey, the legendary Welsh singer whom she met in March at the Rose Ball in Monaco, has even come to greet her on stage.
And Garlochí and forever. And to prepare your bags, because the 50 years tour, in the end, is the preview of a double album that will be released with the Polvorones, which Isabel Pantoja will eat on the road, because she already has dates in Barcelona, ??on the 30th. December at the Palau Sant Jordi; Bilbao, on January 13, 2024 at the Bilbao Arena Miribilla: and in Madrid, on April 13 at the Wizink Center. This is how Isabel Pantoja turns half a century, singing, and she is also Maribel, ‘for’ you choose.
