Roughly a year on from its release, Renaissance has been conspicuous by its relative absence. Beyoncé herself occasionally sports shades. The result is a set of outfits – and a wider spectacle – so dangerously gleaming that the many thousand people in this Cardiff stadium really should be watching the third night of the Renaissance world tour through a pinhole projector, as one might view an eclipse. Somehow, Beyoncé has taken a mirrorball and multiplied it by tinsel, then lacquered it in liquid titanium and thrown a post-marathon aluminium foil blanket on it for good measure. In between is a two-and-a-half-hour assault on the senses, in which the word “shiny” ceases to have meaning. It ends with a photo of Beyoncé’s mother and her “godmother” – her late Uncle Jonny, to whom Renaissance, Beyoncé’s seventh album, is dedicated a gay man who was HIV-positive. I t begins with what looks like an old-fashioned TV test card but is in fact the colours of the Progress Pride flag, arrayed across the back of the giant stage.
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