Adele’s earns jaw dropping £2million for flying in and out of Las Vegas, writes ALISON BOSHOFF

The stakes are high, as Adele and her team know all too well. Yesterday was the first night of her now notoriously delayed four-month residency at Caesars Palace Coliseum in Las Vegas.

One down, 31 potentially dangerous executions to go. Now there’s one overriding concern among her team: for the sake of Adele’s reputation, there shouldn’t be any cancellations this time.

Everyone is utterly focused on avoiding the pitfalls of the past, when Adele reached for a grand Vegas spectacle — only to collapse embarrassingly after she decided to cancel her scheduled January shows less than 24 hours before she was due to take the stage. to cancel, emotionally declaring “It’s just not done.”

Local Vegas journalist Scott Roeben – who broke the news of her residency in 2021 – tells me that Caesars Palace has “worked hard” to make sure this tour is as drama-free as possible.

“What everyone is worried about is that she really shouldn’t have to cancel one show because people are afraid another backlash would be very, very damaging. She already has a reputation as a diva. She can’t let the fans down again.”

Adele has long said she wants all her Vegas shows to be “intimate” — the theater at Caesars seats just 4,100 people, small for a woman who can fill stadiums — and hopes to chat between songs and entertain fans from the inviting audiences to join her on stage every night. Tickets would sell for as much as $38,000 each. Fans know how rare it is to see an idol up close.

Some insiders think the chance to see Adele live will be even rarer in the future: that this Vegas tour could be her last.

Scott Roeben is one. He says: ‘The belief is that this will be a sort of swan song. The guild is off the lily in terms of record sales, and Adele has said she wants to have a baby and do a college degree, her focus is really moving away from music. Her heart just isn’t in it.’

But for now, broody or not, Adele just needs to get through the residency. And that is no mean feat: tormented by stage fright, she is a kind of tortured artist. Rehearsing, as she herself put it, for “12 hours a***ing day,” she said last month when discussing her preparations, “I’m sick and tired of all things musical.”

Her comments don’t quite reflect the enthusiastic tone you expect from an artist. While she arguably had something to prove for previous performances, such as her 2016 world tour — an experience she says “still overcome” — that drive has waned.

It’s perhaps this emotion that was at the forefront on Thursday night when Adele tweeted about her extreme pre-show nerves, saying she felt “a million miles from home.”

She continued, “Maybe it’s because I didn’t start when I was supposed to. Maybe it’s because it’s opening night, maybe because Hyde Park went so great, maybe because I like the show I don’t know. But it’s safe to say I’ve never been more nervous before a show in my career, but at the same time I wish today was tomorrow! Can’t wait to see you there x.”

Her loyal team offers her reassurance all the time: stylist Jamie Mizrahi, hair stylist Sami Knight and manicurist Michelle Humphrey. They will be with her every weekend, just like her boyfriend, the sports agent Rich Paul.

Leading up to the show’s cancellation, insiders said the pair were constantly “in the middle of an emotional shout-out” during rehearsals, but their relationship is now stronger than ever and they’ve since moved in together.

Longtime managers Jonathan Dickens and Rose Moon will also be in attendance.

And while Adele’s contract may bind her to four months of performing, it’s bound to be a feather-bed prison.

When she’s in town, she stays in a £30,000 suite at Caesars Palace, with her own butler – who’s free for the performer as part of their agreement.

Between November and March, she’ll spend just one night a week in the desert city to perform twice, fly to Vegas on Friday to perform, stay the night, and then take a short flight back to Los Angeles every Saturday after she is released. phase.

It’s possibly the world’s most lucrative commute: She makes nearly $1 million per show.

In fact, Adele apparently struck a deal where she will receive a whopping 50 percent of the merchandise. Expensive branded items adorn the shelves of the Caesars Palace store.

Here you can spend $110 on a “Rolling in the Deep” sweatshirt, pick up socks with wine glasses on them, buy necklaces that say “divorced,” and even get Adele-branded handkerchiefs.

What won’t be on display, however, are the giant white floating steps on stage and the infamous water feature — damned by Adele as a “baggy old pond” — that were planned the first time around.

For all her complaints about long rehearsals, it’s clear that behind the scenes many hundreds of others have also been working hard for a long time, collectively holding their breath in the hope that the new set would please the monstrous Adele.

While the singer fired set designer Esmeralda Devlin, a hugely respected professional, in January after a “headbutt,” things were calmer the second time around.

Sources suggest Adele demanded constant changes leading up to the first opening night, and had never really been clear about what she wanted. Replacing Devlin is London’s Kim Gavin, who warmed up for this performance with visits to Vegas during the summer, and took charge of her set at the Hyde Park concerts in July, where Adele performed before a subdued curtain of gold and bronze discs. that blew in the wind and caught the lights.

Gavin has just completed staging for a show featuring the world of Bond at the Royal Albert Hall – a fairly similar venue in size and concert in tone.

In January, Adele laid the blame for the canceled show firmly on Covid, tearfully declaring, “Half of my crew and team is [ill] with Covid and still, and it was impossible to finish the show.”

Since then, however, she’s returned several times to the question of why she pulled the carpet on a $150 million production — and, remarkably, Covid’s excuse has been thrown out.

In July she told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that the main issues were artistic.

And despite fans losing thousands of pounds in travel and hotel bills, for which Adele said she was “devastated,” she was also particularly defiant.

“I don’t think any other artist would have done what I did and that’s why it was such a huge, huge story. It was like, ‘I don’t care. You can’t buy me, you can’t buy me for nothing. I’m not just going to do a show because I have to or because people are being let down or because we’re going to lose a lot of money.” ‘

However, Scott Roeben notes, “It was detrimental to her because of who she was as a performer.

“The expectation of her because of the music is of someone sincere and straightforward, and it didn’t seem to be.

“I believe she was upset, I don’t think she was pretending to be upset, but I do think she was looking for a reason to explain the cancellation.

She didn’t want to look like a crybaby or a temperamental performer, so she chose Covid — maybe ten percent of the reason and made that the reason.

“The initial postponement was mostly an artistic decision colored by her behind-the-scenes issues and issues with the creative team, and didn’t really have much to do with Covid.”

This time, Casino.org’s Roeben says, “It’s going to be an Adele show, but not a Vegas show. I think last time they tried to bring it up to the level of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, but that wall-to-wall spectacle never felt right to her.”

But now comes her chance to erase those memories and repair that reputational damage.

Adele has promised those who bought tickets: “I’m going to give you the very best of me.”

But there’s a good chance it’s for the last time.