If Sting had shouted ''Dřepkins!'', the whole hall would have knelt...

Sting has been taking stock for several years now. First, he and his colleagues brushed aside The Police, then he set off on a brilliant pop tour with orchestras behind him, and now, for his sixtieth birthday, he gave himself a rope, on which he hung his bass around his neck after a long time. And you know what? It still works.

The week-long sold-out concert at the Prague Congress Centre, where Sting unpacked more than twenty songs from his biographical box, had a clear script. After a perfectly composed start, there were tried-and-true tracks interspersed with songs by the Police. These were replaced by Sting's treats from newer albums, and the end belonged to the classics and an acoustic dot with crowd singing. No over combined effects, neon shortcuts from Matějská and moody projections with meaningless ornaments. Just great music.

Sting knows how to make the most of the minimum. And that includes his wardrobe. In a plain T-shirt that anyone in the audience could buy in the lobby, he put on a show that would have put out the stars on all the red carpets in the world. (It's true that his curves help him a lot. The figure of a gym instructor, which defies common ideas about the lifestyle of rock stars, is undeniable.)

When he arrived on stage, he only had to exhaust his rich vocabulary in Czech (Dobrý večer, Praho. Thanks) and crowds would have flocked to his open arms. The opening melody 'All This Time' only confirmed that the Congress Centre - despite the management's wishes - is a space completely unsuitable for events where people dance from the first notes. Moreover, when the chorus of 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' from Police lit up, Sting could see the sold-out plush seats: people were moving around in them funny and clapping with their eyes shining.

Unlike concerts with an orchestra, he even talked and introduced most of his songs with his own memory, linked to the creation of the text.

Among other things, the Czech listener learned that thanks to 'Ghost Story' he was talking to his deceased father by the fireplace or that he was led to the song 'The End of the Game' by a fox that had bleached his chicken coop.

The atmosphere in the hall could not have been better. Sting extended his October birthday on tour and enjoyed his sixtieth birthday with everyone in the hall in a completely relaxed manner. And that also means the great band led by the Miller family, i.e. Sting's court guitarist Dominik and his son Rufus.

She didn't show off unnecessarily, but simply played great with the help of the pleasant Australian vocalist Jo Lawry, even though there was an unwanted "binding" from the wiretaps. Moreover, one didn't feel like she was just slavishly replaying a similar program for dozens of months, which only changes in nuances depending on how much the master sleeps.

Sting also mixed the songs for the gentlemen so that they wouldn't get bored and played the rock blaster Demolition Man, the western country 'Love Is Stronger Than Justice' and the hit 'Desert Rose' with elements of world music. (Following the example of the film Critics' Choice Awards, I would give the award mainly to the jazz-tinged punk 'Driven To Tears', with which Sting set out to fight indifference to famine in the 1980s.)

Jubilant has said in interviews that the recent tour with the Police was good, but he doesn't want to repeat it. "It's like going back to the woman you left behind. With all the good and bad that you can think of. And that's just not possible anymore," explained the sixteen-time Grammy winner.

It's a nice paradox that it was this ex-wife who provided him with a brilliant acoustic finale in the form of 'Message In A Bottle' after encores, during which people ran down the stairs and started dancing right under the stage.

No miracles were expected at Vyšehrad. The fans came for exactly what Sting served them. Some may have missed the song 'Englishman In New York', others missed 'Roxanne', and others were drawn to some of Peter Tickell's violin solos.

A thousand people, a thousand tastes, so to speak. When Sting played 'Fields of Gold,' one of my colleagues whispered in my ear that songs like that used to get him into trouble on the ski slope in his freshman year. Whether he was flexing his shoulders or just teasing me when he saw me swaying to the beat, I'll probably never know. But I noticed that there were three thousand of us on the ski slope, and everyone would have humbly done a "sneak peek" if "Cabadaj with a bass" had been blaring at them.

(c) iDNES by Jana Záhorková