A Star Is Reborn: Divas’ Vegas Residencies Shine Bright

AP Photo / Chris Pizzello / Invision – Viva Las Vegas
Lady Gaga’s recent sold-out residency in Las Vegas grossed $15.9 million over 11 shows. She’s seen here performing “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born” with Bradley Cooper at the Oscars Feb. 24 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

It has been 16 years since Celine Dion arrived at the newly built Colosseum at Caesars Palace with her first Las Vegas residency “A New Day…,” and in the years following that debut the names of ever more resident artists have shined on the showroom marquees of Sin City. 

Since the early days of “the house that Celine built,” the list of top-tier entertainers headlining residencies has grown in length and diversity. Artists such as Lady Antebellum, Aerosmith and Drake have joined the ranks of Dion, Britney Spears, Elton John, Bette Midler, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, Jennifer Lopez and a select group of others as major resident stars.

The latest addition to that list is Lady Gaga, whose “A Star Is Born” duet with Bradley Cooper, “Shallow,” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song last month. 

On Dec. 28, Gaga launched a recurring stint at the Park Theater at Park MGM that offers fans two different productions: “Enigma,” a greatest-hits show with all the flashy Vegas theatricality one might expect and “Jazz and Piano,” a production featuring stripped-down takes on her own hits along with popular standards. In her first five weeks at the venue, Gaga performed 11 shows, two of which were the “Jazz & Piano” production. That show’s Jan. 20 debut included an appearance by Gaga’s former recording and touring partner Tony Bennett. The second “Jazz & Piano,” on Feb. 3, closed Gaga’s opening run of Park Theater concerts.

In all, her 11 sold-out Vegas shows grossed a combined $15.9 million with 59,162 tickets reported sold. Gaga returns to the Park MGM from May 30 to June 15 for nine shows; from Oct. 17 to Nov. 9, she will perform 12 more shows at the venue.

Another Oscar winner and a veteran of Sin City residencies is Cher, who returned to the Park Theater on March 13, kicking off nine performances of her “Classic Cher” production. 

The diva, also in the midst of a worldwide arena tour that bowed last September, took a brief furlough from the road to play for Las Vegas crowds. 

She will perform three shows each week for the remainder of March, marking her second-to-last series of concerts at the venue. Her final run of six shows comes later this summer, beginning Aug. 21 and wrapping Sept. 1. The “Classic Cher” residency began on Feb. 8, 2017, and included appearances at the Park Theater at Park MGM as well as another MGM Resorts property located in Oxon Hill, Md., The Theater at MGM National Harbor. 

Altogether, grosses from 39 headlining performances of the production totaled $39.4 million from 324,595 sold seats.

Cher also starred in an earlier Las Vegas residency from May 2008 through February 2011 at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, alternating with Midler and other headliners over three years. 

Dubbed “Cher,” the production ran for 192 shows with sales topping $97.4 million from nearly 700,000 total tickets. Her ongoing Here We Go Again world tour that began with an Oceania trek last September and October, followed by the current North American leg, has racked up $32.8 million so far from 280,924 tickets moved at 28 shows. After a final slate of concerts in Europe this fall, the tour will close on 

Nov. 1 in Dublin.

Dion’s final run of 16 shows at The Colosseum is set to begin on May 14. By the time she concludes her “Celine” residency on June 8, the show will have run periodically at the Las Vegas venue for more than eight years. 

During that time, box-office tallies from 346 performances of the production have been logged in Pollstar’s archives with sales reaching $225 million from over 1.4 million tickets. Her first residency at the theater, “A New Day…,” staged from 2003 to 2007, wrapped with a final gross totaling $385 million from 2.8 million tickets over 713 performances.