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I’VE come home at last!” Those words sung by Barbra Streisand from the Sunset Boulevard showstopper, As If We Never Said Goodbye, elicited a roar of welcome from the sold-out crowd at the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn on Thursday evening.
Streisand’s return to her roots for two concerts (the second on Saturday night) was a sentimental homecoming and a royal act of noblesse oblige in which a showbusiness monarch regaled the adoring subjects of her native province in a concert that was steeped in Brooklyn lore. With lyrics revised to mention Brooklyn docks and nova lox and knishes, the songs conveyed a message that was reiterated again and again: deep inside, I’m just a commoner like you. As she bonded with her flock, her Brooklyn accent seemed more pronounced than ever.
Streisand is 70, and her voice is still singularly compelling, although not in prime condition. As it has lowered and acquired an occasionally husky edge, her high notes have disappeared. Even the upper register of People challenged her. The days are long gone when Streisand projected the fearless bravado of a vocal prodigy skipping along a tightrope. The Streisand of 2012 is a vulnerable if imperial semi-operatic diva who carefully conserves her power.
In spirit, the concert, during which she was supported by a 60- member plus orchestra conducted by Bill Ross, was a family and neighbourhood affair that included a short film, shot some years ago, in which assorted Brooklynites who knew Streisand back when reminisced.
Cole Porter’s You’re the Top, was outfitted with new lyrics to be a celebration of all things Brooklyn.
Who knew that Jason Gould, her 45-year-old son, was a polished crooner who could comport himself comfortably in an arena? His home movie of photographs of the two of them from his infancy into adulthood preceded his performance of This Masquerade (reminiscent of George Benson’s late ‘70s recording) and a touching mother-son duet of How Deep Is the Ocean? One of the evening’s most glorious moments joined Irving Berlin’s What’ll I Do? and Rodgers and Hart’s My Funny Valentine, in a duet by Streisand with her special guest, the pop-jazz trumpeter Chris Botti. His silvery tone and trailing phrases combined with the orchestra infused both songs with an aching film-noir melancholy.
Botti was also involved in two of the evening’s low points, an empty, pyrotechnic showpiece for trumpet and drums based on When I Fall in Love and a soupy trumpet and violin duet with Caroline Campbell.
Also on hand was the Italian teenage trio Il Volo, which has been called a cross between the Jonas Brothers and the Three Tenors and which delivered a polished, impassioned O Sole Mio.
Other memorable moments were segments celebrating Streisand’s professional relationships with Marvin Hamlisch and Jule Styne.
Her rendition of The Way We Were, sung with Hamlisch’s original orchestration was, in a word, exquisite. The Styne portion led off with Being Good Isn’t Good Enough, from the 1967 musical Hallelujah, Baby! that led to a fragmentary medley of songs from Gypsy, delivered with an appropriate ferocity.
Being Good Isn’t Good Enough is the sensational first cut on Streisand’s newest album, Release Me (Columbia), a collection of outtakes from her recordings going back to the 1960s. Originally chosen to open her 1985 Broadway Album, it was replaced by Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together, in retrospect not a good choice.
Another high point of Release Me is the Jimmy Webb torch song Didn’t We, which she also performed with intense feeling. A bare voice-and-piano version of Randy Newman’s I Think It’s Going to Rain Today, recorded in 1970 with the composer at the piano, anticipates the strippeddown sound of her 2009 album, Love Is the Answer. The most recent outtake is If It’s Meant to Be, by Brian Byrne and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, recorded for Streisand’s last studio album, What Matters Most. The Bergmans, who are also Brooklyn born, were exalted in a suite whose high point was The Way He Makes Me Feel, from Yentl.
Late in the show, Streisand tackled Here’s to Life, that autumnal summing-up and looking-back ballad that has become the de rigueur anthem for singers over 60. Hearing Streisand sing the lyrics I had my share, I drank my fill / And even though I’m satisfied, I’m hungry still, I connected them to one of her earliest recordings, Much More, from The Fantasticks, in which an innocent girl dreams of going to town in golden gown. Streisand went there, was crowned queen, and drank more than her fill.
Appetite, yearning, curiosity – whatever you call it – is a quality embedded in Streisand’s voice.
Like few singers of any age, she has the gift of conveying a primal human longing in a beautiful sound. She is hungry still.
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