Rosalía delivers an orchestral pop masterpiece at the Kia Forum

The stage lights rose as barefoot dancers in black coveralls pushed a tall white box into a spotlight at the Kia Forum on Monday, carefully folding down the sides to reveal Rosalía motionless on a pedestal like a ballerina in a music box.

The Spanish singer, dressed in pointe shoes and a romantic, feathery tutu, held her pose as the 20-some members of the orchestra on her Lux Tour played and fans in Inglewood for the first of two shows at the Forum cheered, the first magical moment in a night of many.

Rosalía opened the show with “Sexo, violencia y llantas,” the opening track of “Lux,” her fourth and most recent album, a record that hits higher marks than most artists working in the broader pop world ever aim for, much less hit.

“Sexo, violencia y llantas” serves as its thesis statement, its lyrics – “Who could live between the two? First love the world, and then love God” – describing the conflict between passions of the earthly and the divine.

Each of the 18 songs on “Lux,” the Latin word for “light,” was inspired by a different female saint, such as Teresa of Ávila, Hildegard of Bingen, the Sufi mystic and poet Rabia Al-Adawiya, and the Jewish prophetess Miriam.

In addition to her native Spanish and Catalan, she wrote, translated and sings different parts of songs in another 12 languages, including Sicilian, Ukrainian, Mandarin and Latin. At the Forum, supertitles on a narrow screen above the stage displayed the lyrics in English across the 23 songs and the hour and 50 minutes of the show.

“What surprised me a lot was that there’s a main theme, which is not fearing, which you can find shared across many religions,” Rosalía told Billboard of her research into the saints. “And I think that’s so powerful because probably the fears that I have, somebody on the other side of the world has the same ones.

“And for me, there’s beauty in that, in understanding that we might think that we’re different, but we’re not.”

As with the album, the concert was divided into four movements or acts. Act I unfolded as it does on “Lux” with five songs built around themes of living in and of the human world with all its messy complexities.

“Reliquia” travels the world, Rosalía singing over a delicate string arrangement, “I lost my tongue in Paris, and all my time in LA / I lost my heels in Milan, and my smile in the UK,” before acknowledging in the chorus, “But my heart has never been my own, I always hand it out, oh / Take a piece of me, keep it for when I’m away / I’ll be your relic.”

“Porcelana” found her dancing en pointe at times, with two male ballet dancers lifting and carrying her as she sang on others. Before “Mio Cristo piange diamenti” – “My Christ cries diamonds” – Rosalía noted how special it felt to be in the Los Angeles area, where much of “Lux” was written and recorded, and then dedicated the song to her vocal coach for the last decade, who was in the audience.

The latter song, written and sung in the style of an operatic aria, was gorgeously sung with Rosalía reaching impossibly high notes at its finale, one of many songs that explain why her current album and tour are so often described as orchestral or classical pop.

The second act opened with “Berghain,” the first single off “Lux,” a harder-edge electronic-based song over which the strings and horns and percussion of the Heritage Orchestra loudly soared.

“L.A., you didn’t just come to this show to cry, OK?” Rosalía said at its close. “I’m sure you came to shake some ass, too!”

That segued into a mini-suite of art-pop tunes from her 2022 album “Motomami,” which she’d featured in a terrific performance at Coachella in 2023 as the final act on the mainstage before Blackpink’s headlining turn. Older songs such as “Saoko,” “La Fama,” and “La Combi Versace,” had the crowd up and dancing throughout before the new “De madrugá” closed the act.

Throughout the different acts of the show, the choreography of the French trio (LA) Horde added a thrillingly different feeling to different songs and movements.

For “Berghain,” a frenzied ecstasy of dance erupted in tandem with its burst of volume and tempo. “Saoko” ended in a pulsing throng of bodies, dancers lifting Rosalía’s black lace skirts for a peekaboo look at the hot pink bicycle shorts she wore beneath. “De madrugá” closed with a touch of flamenco-style footwork.

Act III got personal in its music and conversation. For a cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” a handful of fans were invited on stage to stand behind a rope barrier while at the top of a staircase in front of them, Rosalía posed inside an ornate gold frame, crimson opera-length gloves on her hands, singing to them like a painting come to life.

Each stop of this tour also features its own confessional booth moment for which Rosalía and a surprise guest – on Monday, “La Bichota” – the Big Boss, Karol G – enter the booth for the guest to reveal some secret relationship moment gone bad.

Here, Karol G threw an ex-boyfriend under the bus, describing how he’d never celebrated her birthday while they were together, and ultimately ghosted her at the airport for a long-planned trip, all while Rosalía gasped in mock horror.

“La Perla,” a song about a toxic ex, was dedicated to Karol G’s ex, and featured perhaps the most-talked-about choreography of the tour, with Rosalía in a white spotlight and black-clad dancers invisible but for their white gloved-hands which encircled her, lifted her, and floated about her throughout the number.

The final run of the main set included “Sauvignon blanc,” sung while draped atop a white grand piano like a sultry nightclub singer of the past. A mini-suite that included “Dios es un stalker” and “La rumba del perdón” was performed at a remote stage at the center of the floor, where the orchestra played all night,

“As the concert comes to an end, I would like to thank everybody who made this possible,” Rosalía said before the last song of the main set. “Gracias to each and every one of you. Thank you for coming. You filled this iconic place, and you sang the songs and kept the energy up all night long – thank you, thank you.”

““Focu’ ranni,” named after the Sicilian phrase that means “great fire,” and inspired by Rosalia of Palermo, who rejected marriage to live in devotion to God, closed out the main set with Rosalía walking slowly to the top of a staircase, facing the audience as she spread her arms and a wing-like cape, and then falling backward off the platform and out of sight.

The encore found her kneeling at the front of the stage to sing “Magnolias,” the final track on “Lux,” and a song in which the singer sees her future death. “Throw me magnolias, throw me magnolias,” she sang over and over in the chorus.

“Promise that you’ll protect me / Me and my name in my absence,” she sang, wrenching the emotion of the words. “Me, who comes from the stars / Today I turn into dust / To return with them.”