Lady Gaga's Surprisingly Great Performance at the Oscars

Mother Monster did her Little Monsters proud that night at the Oscars when she brought the house down with her startlingly minimalist yet emotionally explosive performance at the stage. Sans her usual fantastic costumes and makeup, her elaborate and acrobatic dance routines, her assorted theatrical props and light shows, she took everyone by surprise, captivating everyone around using nothing more than just the power of her fantastic voice.

Lady Gaga in a floaty white dress performed a medley featuring "The Sound Of Music," "My Favourite Things," "Edelweiss" and "Climb Every Mountain" as part of a 50th-anniversary tribute to The Sound of Music. According to The Hollywood Reporter, during and immediately following her performance, "Facebook and Twitter experienced their highest activity of the night." Bette Middler tweeted: "Brava, @LadyGaga! This girl can sing anything!!" On Facebook alone, Lady Gaga's performance reportedly "triggered show-related interactions from 214,000 people per minute globally, and 154,000 people per minute in the U.S." according to the entertainment news site.

Dame Julie Andrews who joined the singer on stage tightly hugged Lady Gaga and said: "Dear Lady Gaga, thank you for that wonderful tribute. It really warmed my heart, it really did."

As for Lady Gaga, she described meeting and sharing the stage with the iconic Julie Andrews as a "magical" surprise. Earlier, while on the red carpet before the show, she told ETOnline: "I'm just very excited to be here and I really put my heart into this performance. It's a tribute performance for a remarkable film that changed the history of cinema forever, and I'm just very honored to be doing it."

Lady Gaga's musical and performance style has remained constantly evolving and expanding. Like her own idol and inspiration Madonna, she said she wants to keep on reinventing herself. Just recently, she collaborated with legendary jazz musician Tony Bennett in the production of an album of jazz standards called "Cheek to Cheek." Later this year, she is set to perform the first ever concert in space as part of Zero G Colony, a three-day music festival to be held at Spaceport America in New Mexico.