Mylène Farmer

Two years after watching the Rolling Stones open Plenitude Arena from the audience, Mylène Farmer took the stage herself as if she had spent those two years measuring the space, imagining what it could hold, and deciding to push every limit there was. From June 7 to 22, 2019, over nine consecutive nights, she proved it.

235,000 spectators. 420 tonnes of set. A show that could only exist here.

This show existed only for this venue

420 tonnes of rigging, screens, and structures suspended, deployed and anchored into every corner of the room. A 70-metre stage. Cube screens descending to the middle of the crowd. A luminous arch hanging in mid-air. Mobile structures that fragmented and recomposed the space with every scene. No other venue in Europe could have housed an infrastructure like this and Mylène Farmer knew it. These nine nights at Plenitude Arena were the only dates of the entire residency.

During two hours, Plenitude Arena became another world.

The entrance is a secret

But those who were there know. At 8:56 PM, seven triangular screens suspended three metres above the crowd lit up. A flying saucer ringed with three luminous circles descended slowly from the ceiling in a blue halo. And Mylène appeared standing in a moon, descending toward her 27,000 fans in a Jean-Paul Gaultier black bodysuit, thigh-high boots, interlaced copper belts. The room detonated. The show had barely begun.

The aesthetics of Blade Runner and Metropolis flooded the screens. Sixteen red-haired dancers stormed a stage that deployed, retracted and split apart. Six Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes. Flames, light beams, ice. Sans Logique absent from stages since 1989 made a return nobody expected and everyone had dreamed of. Désenchantée turned the entire room into a single choir. And on June 18, Sting joined her on stage for an unforgettable duet.

There was also that suspended moment the absolute ritual of her shows : Mylène alone with her pianist at the centre of the room, in a white feather-sleeved gown, letting her tears fall in front of her fans. “I wish you could be on stage to see this incredible show. Thank you endlessly for following me for so long.” No one in the stands remained unmoved.

The finale was an apocalypse

L’Horloge — the very song Mylène had walked on stage to for the first time in 1989 — rang out one last time. The stage caught fire. Flames rose. Towering in her red cape, she raised her arm and vanished into a black cloud. The circle was complete. Thirty years of performing, in a single gesture.

Nine nights. 235,000 spectators. A live album certified platinum. A concert film screened simultaneously in 613 cinemas across 18 countries for 162,000 viewers. And an absolute record: no artist had ever performed so many consecutive nights in the largest indoor venue in Europe.

Some shows mark a venue forever. This one did.