During a rare moment of stasis during Lady Gaga’s marathon set at Coachella on Friday, she waited for a full-throated cheer to ebb away, blew a kiss and then made her intentions crystal clear.
“I love you so much, I wanted to make a romantic gesture to you this year, in these times of mayhem,” the 39-year-old headliner told her crowd. “I decided to build you an opera house in the desert.”
Pop’s queen of irreverence brought theatrics, yes, and her soaring voice, of course, but also fantastical storylines built on jaw-dropping imagery — Gaga met her operatic ambitions and then some. The hour-and-50-minute set raced by, divided into an intro, four acts and a finale. When Gaga wasn’t on stage, thunderous beats and contortionist dancers engrossed the crowd, easily the day’s largest. Everything felt right; we were in the hands of a composer, librettist, singer and actress, all rolled into one.
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Lady Gaga performs at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coa
Lady Gaga performs at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coa
The highlights of Gaga’s set defy simple description. During “Abracadabra” alone, she looked at one moment like a sick Victorian child, riding across stage on dancers’ shoulders, then gained a perch and suddenly appeared like the satanic DJ of a medieval prison. Shortly after, “Poker Face” saw Gaga as the black queen in a filmed-from-above chessboard dance-off. Spoiler alert, for those who plan to watch on YouTube or next weekend: Gaga wins, then screeches, “Off with her head!” at the fallen white figurehead.
Much of the credit has to go to choreography phenom Parris Goebel, who earned a “creative direction” nod alongside Gaga in the preshow credit roll. Goebel’s mounting influence in dance is a victory for concertgoers, but this show was a unique tour de force. The two-dozen-plus background dancers jerked, thrust and flowed in unison around an at-times visibly delighted Gaga.
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Lady Gaga performs at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coa
The headliner set arrived on the heels of the star’s seventh studio album, “Mayhem,” which returns her to her pop-for-fun’s-sake roots, weaving threads of disco, funk and what she’s called “electro grunge defiance.” She played several of the new songs on Friday, with parts of the gibberishy, thumping single “Abracadabra” cropping up multiple times. The song ends with a prompt, which Gaga phrased as a question to close the beginning of Friday’s set: “Death or love tonight?”
She wouldn’t make us choose. Death, and undeath, were recurrent themes. She opened Act 2 half-buried in a tomb, with her arm embedded in a skeleton’s ribcage, surrounded by nightmarish undead. Soon after, she led another skeleton in a swingy dance for “Zombieboy” and played a shortened version of recent hit “Die With a Smile” on a piano made of skulls. After an abrupt intermission at show’s end, Gaga emerged as a cadaver under a plastic sheet. (The furious work of plague-doctor-dressed dancers would bring her back for a triumphant “Bad Romance” finale.)
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There was plenty of good romance in the air, too. Gaga shouted a hello to her fiancé, Michael Polansky, whom Gaga has said pointed her toward the final form of “Mayhem”: “He was like, ‘Babe. I love you. You need to make pop music.’” And the earth seemed to stop spinning for 2018’s “Shallow.” Gaga played the song alone, on piano, in the middle of the crowd; in the moments before her first note, you could have heard a pin drop at Coachella’s mainstage. Once she began, the crowd’s voice swelled as one. It’s the first tear I’ve shed at a music festival.
Lady Gaga performs at the Coachella Stage during the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coa
Gaga’s set wasn’t flawless. “The Beast,” from her new album, fell pretty flat, especially in contrast to an excellent “Alejandro” rendition directly prior. The opera’s storytelling was hard to follow. And a chunk of the crowd left before “Bad Romance,” thanks to Gaga’s very convincing “Goodnight!” after she pranced along the crowd’s edge. Some of the wow techniques were much less novel: I have a feeling that Travis Scott, Saturday, will make even wider use of the mainstage’s pyrotechnic flares.
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But it was a triumph of artistic teamwork and care, and of joint catharsis. Gaga knows the basic truths that concerts are fun if everyone’s dancing, and that choruses sound excellent when thousands of voices yell every word. That construct — basic, hit-laden — is in her wheelhouse, 10 times out of 10, but it wouldn’t have been enough. She gave Coachella more, and we’re lucky to have seen it.
