‘You can rewrite your history’: Lady Gaga says of Mayhem Requiem concert film

LOS ANGELES – Reinvention has long been part of Lady Gaga’s artistic DNA. But for her new concert film, the pop superstar takes it a step further, inspired by the belief that broken lives can be put back together.

Now streaming on Apple Music, where it is free to watch for subscribers, Apple Music Live: Lady Gaga Mayhem Requiem is a Gothic opera-style reimagining of the artiste’s seventh studio album, Mayhem (2025).

The 40-year-old American singer, songwriter and actress – whose real name is Stefani Germanotta – delighted fans with a surprise appearance at a Los Angeles screening of the movie on May 14.

She made a suitably dramatic entrance, flanked by a New Orleans-style brass marching band and dozens of dancers in a simulated funeral procession. The idea being that she was laying her Mayhem album to rest.

Veiled mourners scattered rose petals on the ground as the singer – wielding an oversized fan and dressed like a widow in a Givenchy gown of scarlet satin and black lace – made her way to the theatre to deafening screams from fans.

Introducing the film, she says she and her fiance Michael Polansky – a 42-year-old American investor and entrepreneur who is also her songwriting partner – “had the best time putting this together with Apple Music, so thank you to them for making this dream of Mayhem a reality”.

Filmed during an intimate one-night-only performance at The Wiltern theatre in Los Angeles, the movie casts Gaga as a spectral figure wandering through the ruins of her own opera.

Cracked columns, shattered arches and scattered debris form the backdrop as she performs reworked versions of Mayhem tracks such as Abracadabra and Disease.

There is also an electro-funk reinterpretation of Die With A Smile, her chart-topping duet with Bruno Mars, originally released in 2024.

The project draws heavily from The Art Of Personal Chaos, the limited nine-show concert series she staged in April and May 2025 to promote Mayhem, performing in the US, Mexico, Brazil and Singapore. Those concerts took inspiration from operas and psychological dramas, the stage designed like a Colosseum-style multi-storey opera house.

The Mayhem Requiem film imagines the collapse of that world.

“We talked about this idea of: What if the opera house from The Art Of Personal Chaos was reduced to rubble, and what if it completely fell apart?” says Gaga, who has won 16 Grammys and is one of the best-selling music artistes of all time.

“What if we tore the album down, completely put it back together and reimagined the music in a new way?

“And to me, this idea that we can take the broken pieces of our lives and put them back together is a lot of why I made this album in the first place,” says the star.

That theme of redefinition and revival echoes Gaga’s own career, which began with maximalist electropop spectacle and breakout hits such as Poker Face, Bad Romance and Just Dance in 2008 and 2009. It then took genre-bending detours into country, jazz and acoustic American folk.

She also crossed over into acting with a stint on the television series American Horror Story in 2015 and 2016. She later picked up a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the romantic musical drama A Star Is Born (2018), for which she also won the Best Original Song prize.

At the Mayhem Requiem screening, Gaga repeatedly acknowledged the support she continues to receive from her fans.

She says: “I hope that you know that this reimagining of my album was for all of you – and it was done to give myself a reminder that you can rewrite your history.”

Mayhem Requiem and its companion spatial-audio album are available on demand with an Apple Music subscription.