Without big gestures and a flood of guests: the singer Ewa Farna built a concert celebration of her thirties mainly on songs. A strong repertoire, perfect sound, a great band and a modest yet impressive show. There was no doubt who is the queen of Czech pop.
On the stage, women dance in ornate costumes similar to those worn by musicians with double basses and violins. The sold-out Prague O2 arena sings “I just have hips like a closet from a man, like a closet / What’s the point when I like to eat, I like to eat.” It is not a megalomaniacal gathering of folk music friends, but the finale of Ewa Farná’s 30th birthday celebration on Saturday.
A moment ago, the Czech-Polish musician went down the long staircase along the walkways, after which she slipped around the standing area to the stage. He sings all the time I have hips like a closethis 2020 hit.
American Meghan Trainor’s cover version of the song really has the qualities of a folk song, although in the original it’s pure R&B. However, Ewa Farné’s band introduces it with a strongly psychedelic intro, during which the sparsely decorated stage seems like an arid desert. One of the most famous songs of the native of Třinec is so hard to recognize at first. The evening is full of similar surprises.
The singer formally celebrated her birthday on August 12, but she planned the party for mid-October. She sold out the largest Czech covered hall. The balance show is watched by around 15,000 spectators, most of whom arrived in white clothes, as the artist requested on social networks.
During the more than two-hour show, it’s fascinating to see how respectable Farna’s career has been.
Ewa Farna performed a modest, yet impressive show. | Photo: Tomáš Moudrý
His first hit Did you even like me released in the fall of 2006, she was only 13 years old. In the O2 arena, it sometimes sounds in the middle of the set. Fires roar from the stage, a decent fireworks display bangs above it. Farna puts her voice into distorted guitars. Although it is a love song, which she already sang as a teenager, there is not a hint of inappropriateness. Perhaps also because the sound evokes the polished sound of the American Olivia Rodrigo, who is breaking the world charts with her current version of the pop-punk genre.
A long and deafening applause follows, the obviously moved singer wipes away tears.
Ewa Farna was discovered by Lešek Wronka, a Czech-Polish music manager, producer and former organizer of the Anděl awards. She later became independent and profiled herself as a solid author and personality who does not let herself be carried away by show business.
All the lamps went out
The concert begins a countdown from zero to thirty. Flashing numbers represent years and are accompanied by videos from the family archive. Around number 14, shots from stages, studios and backstage of concert halls begin to predominate.
A low, white pyramid stands in the middle of the sparsely decorated stage, with a generous projection surface above it. About twenty male and female dancers in silver costumes enter the stage, one of them slowly climbs onto the platform behind the pyramid. However, she is not the main actor of the evening. She stands in the middle of the crowd on the edge of the stage, with a shiny microphone in her hand, into which she sings the first words of the evening: “All the lamps have already gone out, it’s time to go to bed / But I don’t care anymore about what’s going on.”
Ewa Farna opens the evening with a current single so what, which she released in mid-August. Within a few seconds, he goes from the number zero, that is, his birth, to the present.
In front of the audience is a four-piece band on the left, a nine-piece choir on the right. The sound is perfect, the musicians play sparingly and brilliantly. While other pop stars rely on half-playback, that is live music with vocals played from the recording, Ewa Farna is supported only by vocalists. When they’re not singing harmonies, they’re holding the choruses, so she can, for example, heckle the audience to make them jump in place without the song losing its energy. “I messed up the lyrics, but at least you can see it’s not for playback,” she jokes later, when in the song Body word combinations.
Ewa Farna started the concert at the O2 arena with the current single No a co, which she released in mid-August. Photo: Tomáš Moudrý | Video: Petr Plhal
We drank for the winter
For Ewa Farna, this is a turning point – she has only been a guest at the O2 Arena, and it is her first time directing an evening here. Still, when he greets the audience without a break for applause after the first few songs, he seems relaxed and joking. “Thanks to you, I have been able to do what I enjoy for seventeen years,” he thanks.
During the composition How is it a heart woven from red neon floats above the stage. Following Silence Farna mostly sings accompanied by Lukáš Chromek’s acoustic guitar. Ecstatic moments alternate with intimate moments, the evening has a brilliantly devised dramaturgy.
Blocks of songs are separated by pre-recorded videos of Farna running backstage. While the make-up artists powder her cheeks on the projection screen, the singer glosses over what’s going on in the hall and what’s on her mind. When she is surprised to show the stage manager backstage the shorts that one of the fans allegedly threw at her, the camera in the hall captures the surprised hockey player Jaromír Jágr.
At the end of the first scene, Farna praises how great it is to be alone sometimes. In a few seconds he runs in front of 15 thousand people and he sings “I’m alone at home, nobody’s allowed to me” to a swinging, danceable beat. It alternates moods and styles, the show has no weak moments.
Song Reincarnation it has an almost gospel feel to it. The first guest enters the stage, the Czech singer of partly Algerian origin Sofian Medjmedj. At first it is hard to understand him, but the sound soon settles down and the finale progresses.
In the second pre-recorded scene, Farna orders a cinnamon latte over the phone. When he goes to collect it, he accidentally slams the door from the O2 arena. Eventually, the cameraman tricks the guards and the show can go on.
The scenes do not appear cramped and smoothly interweave the events in the hall. In the video, Farna confides how much she is afraid of heights and flying, after which she allows herself to be hung on a swing high up to the ceiling in front of the audience. A microphone signal crackles in the air for a moment, a long train of purple dress flutters behind the artist.
Vojtěch Dyk comes as the second guest. “We drank to the winter, kissed to the spring, loved the summer, slept in the fall,” the verses nimbly set to the sound of an acoustic guitar. Lyrics Catsalready she sang Zuzana Navarová, who is no longer alive, with the band Nerez, interspersed with scatting and melodic bits, improvisation works.
During the song Everything or nothing, Ewa Farna let herself be hung on a swing in the O2 arena. Photo: Barbora Chlebová | Video: Petr Plhal
Well above average
“I shouldn’t improvise here,” Farna thinks at one point, then changes her mind. “You came to me,” he retorts in the Ostrava dialect, and Spatra begins to sing to a simple guitar riff. He improvises to the tune of the song Oh Macarenathe audience suddenly joins in.
“When Dyk was here, Chobot is still missing,” says Farna, whose real name is Ewa Chobot, of her husband. On the ramp leading from the stage to the audience with Martin Chobot, they stand with their backs to each other while singing It’s from usa ballad sung in Czech-Polish about their relationship.
Farna keeps the media and tabloids away from her body, she manages to disappear from the field of vision between releasing albums. But with the same elegance, he manages to write a song full of details about his relationship with his life partner and, until recently, a guitarist.
One of the strongest moments comes from the composition Good morning, dear, already written for Farna by David Stypka. Before he died the year before last at the age of only 41, he left behind perhaps the best Czech pop composition of the last decade or two. Now his voice rings through the O2 arena. Farna plays the ballad behind a white piano placed high above the stage. In the second half, Stypko’s silhouette appears on the edge of the platform.
One of the strongest moments of the concert in the O2 arena was brought by Dobrá ráno, mílá, written for Farná by David Stypka. Photo: Barbora Chlebová | Video: Ondra Teichmann
A few more songs follow, there will be confetti, but they don’t even have to bang. The music created a much stronger impression.
The impersonal, cool space of the O2 arena often tempts artists to perform until the music is overshadowed by acrobatics or pyrotechnics. That was not the case on Saturday night. Ewa Farna has created a human, uplifting atmosphere in the hall intended primarily for sports and mass entertainment. She performed a great concert, in which she played prime pure-bred pop, the quality and performance of which greatly exceeded the domestic standard.
