Nostalgic Apotheosis with Sting in Cap Roig - The Briton opens the 15th edition of the festival in Calella de Palafrugell in top form...

In top form at 63 years of age and with a completely devoted audience, Sting opened the 15th edition of the Cap Roig Festival in Calella de Palafrugell (Girona) last night. Yesterday was an evening for nostalgic fans, and the Briton revisited the greatest hits of The Police and his solo career in the nearly two-hour concert.

"We're happy; it was a great night to open the festival," said festival director Juli Guiu at the end of the concert, adding that "the crowd had a great time." The general impression after the concert was that the opening had lived up to expectations.

Right on time for the concert, with some of the audience still waiting to settle into their seats, the British musician energetically emerged onto the sober Cap Roig stage behind his bass, ready to treat the more than two thousand people packed into the stands to a rundown of his greatest hits. With the opening chords of the award-winning "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You," the audience quickly got into the swing of things, and those who hadn't yet arrived at their seats rushed to join them.
 

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police—the band he founded with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland—and Englishman in New York followed. Great hits welcomed him to Cap Roig before greeting the audience with "Bona nit," "the only words I know in Catalan," he later clarified.

He spoke little to the audience, but they were on hand from the first chord of the concert. He uttered a few phrases in Spanish and encouraged them to sing "Heavy Cloud, No Rain" with him "louder." They applauded him wildly, as did his band, especially the young violinist Peter Tickell, who performed some magnificent solos that brought some of the audience to their feet. For this first night in Cap Roig, the Briton was accompanied by Dominic Miller on guitar; Vinnie Colaiuta on drums; David Sancious on keyboards; and Jo Lawry on vocals, in addition to Tickell.

Sting didn't forget any of his greatest hits or those of The Police. Walking on the moon, Message in a bottle or De do do do, in the first part of a concert that ended after an hour and a half with another Roxane classic, with a special version with Ain't no sunshine by Bill Withers included.
 

In the encores, the Briton continued with the classics with Desert Rose and Every Breath You Take, which the Cap Roig audience sang and danced to on their feet. He concluded with a second set of encores, featuring Next to You and Fragile.

Yesterday wasn't Sting's first time performing in Cap Roig. In 2011, he also won over his fans with a symphonic retelling of the most famous songs of his musical career, accompanied by the Vallès Symphony Orchestra.

(c) El Pais by Anna Estanol