The emotional echo of Nino Bravo welcomes the audience to the Roig Arena.

A stream of smiling faces welcomed us to the new venue. At the wide entrances to the dance floor, a rather aging crowd (it's been a while since I've seen so many people showing their paper tickets) milled around the many food stalls. The desire to please, the excitement of the moment, the smell of newness was palpable. Everything was in its place at the new Roig Arena. And with good reason: no matter how hard we try, neither a bullring, nor a velodrome, nor a football stadium, nor a huge parking lot by the port are venues designed for live music, even if they do the trick. The elephant graveyard that populates our history of now-defunct medium- or large-capacity venues—Arena, Greenspace—also demands that the Roig Arena's annex, with a capacity for two thousand people, get rolling: it will be on the 22nd of this month with Australian band The Cat Empire.

Unlike all those others, the new Quatre Carreres multipurpose venue is conceived and designed to host live music (apart from basketball and other sports), and it was evident last night: impeccable sound, adequate volume, state-of-the-art lighting, four screens from which you can't miss a single detail, one of them overhead—right down to the teleprompter with the lyrics—and ideal visibility from any of the nearly 20,000 seats occupied by an audience that had sold out all the paper months ago. It couldn't be more comfortable.

One of Valencia's major outstanding issues of recent times is the concordance between continents and content, between venues—showy, no doubt—and programming that adapts to them with a certain logic and justifies them. The Roig Arena was born with that vocation. Musically, the only thing missing is not only those artists who, with all certainty, would have come to any of the venues we've mentioned before (almost all of them have), but also those internationally renowned musicians whom we don't see here. Let it compete not only with Sant Jordi or Movistar Arena, but also put us on par with programming in cities like Bilbao or Seville. Let's hope it's just a matter of time. The venue's performances are worth it.

The one thing no one in their right mind could possibly compete with is the voice of Nino Bravo. That's why the show Bravo, Nino , which took over from the distant tribute given to him at the Valencia Bullring in 1973, had the virtue of adapting the pieces in his repertoire to the characteristics of its performers. Or even of having them adapt them to their own territory: twenty musicians from all over Spain, supported by an orchestra of more than twenty instrumentalists, directed by José Miguel Álvarez, in a dynamic show: one song per vocalist, as a rule. "Funambulista" gave a bolero feel to "Eres todo cuanto quiero" (You Are All I Want) ; Sole Giménez cradled "Te quiero, te quiero" (I Love You, I Love You) to a bossa nova rhythm; La Mari, from Chambao, and Pitingo, each in their own way, brought "Mi tierra" (My Land) and "Es el viento" (It's the Wind) closer to flamenco; Carlos Goñi (Revólver) brilliantly resolved the rock (almost blues rock ) quota with La puerta del amor and an imposing Marta Sánchez very well got into the role of a swinging sixties pop star – in the style of Massiel or Sandie Shaw – with Tú cambiaras . David Bisbal also looked good in the suit of the exultant América to close the night, after Vanesa Martín and Pablo López reread Cartas amarillas with the cadence of Pablo López's piano.

The only musician who had already been present at the 1973 tribute is Víctor Manuel: with him, styles are irrelevant because his voice takes over anything he touches. His rendition of " Libre ," including a kiss on the floor, erupted in one of the most thunderous ovations of the night. As did Eva Ferri, Nino's daughter, in a duet with her father, not only sonically but also visually: the screen merging the two in a single shot, as if they were singing almost nose to nose, elevates to another dimension the technique that Natalie Cole began popularizing in 1991 when she performed a virtual duet with her father, Nat King Cole, who had died almost three decades earlier. Personally, it generates more unease than excitement in me. Like the predictions that venture certain uses of AI.

The loose verse was the contribution of Jorge Martí (La Habitación Roja), Guille Milkyway (La Casa Azul), and Óscar Ferrer along with Vicente Illescas (Varry Brava), performing Mi tierra over something resembling an old-school hip-hop rhythmic base. As Guille well recalled, Nino also cut his teeth in the world of pop bands, in his case Los Hispanos (like Camilo Sesto, he went through Los Botines, Bruno Lomas through Los Milos, Juan Camacho through Los Relámpagos, or Juan Bau through Modificación), groups that in their own way also emerged from nowhere long before the word indie was invented. There weren't many shortcuts to success. Óscar, the vocalist of Varry Brava, offered a timid denunciation of the genocide perpetrated in Gaza, without explicitly mentioning it. Miguel Poveda made this very clear a few minutes later, after his heartfelt rendition of Como todos , a song in which Manuel Alejandro (in the late 1960s) claimed that everyone should love and live as they wish, without ties or prejudices. It was barely a brushstroke (like the use of Valencian: only he, Jorge Martí, and even Bisbal used it) that is useful for understanding how, when, and where we are.

Just one final note: I mentioned Manuel Alejandro. It's a shame that neither his name, nor those of Juan Carlos Calderón, Augusto Algueró, or the duo of José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero were mentioned throughout the nearly two-hour show. I don't even remember seeing them in the closing credits on the screen. They wrote the songs, and they deserve recognition. Like the recognition Raphael or Tom Jones occasionally give their composers live.