Wolverine sings, Streisand saves, Fiona Apple stuns

Here are reviews of Les Miserables and The Guilt Trip, as well as some of my favorite books, albums, and songs of 2012. As the year grows shorter, my posts grow longer. Well, hey, it could be War and Peace!

Les Miserables

 

While writing Les Miserables, his 1,100 page tale of morality, mortality, and class struggle, Victor Hugo probably never once stopped to ask himself; "Will this story sell a lot of T-shirts?" And yet, God on high, it has. Since it opened in 1987, the through-sung musical adaptation of Hugo's novel has become not just a classic but an out-and-out brand name. Its most iconic image, that of a sad-looking little girl with windswept hair, has been plastered onto thousands of T-shirts and posters and coffee mugs. Its most iconic song, "I Dreamed A Dream", has been performed by everyone from Neil Diamond to Celtic Woman. This three-hour orgy of famine, despair, and death has been brilliantly saluted at Royal Albert Hall, touchingly referenced on Glee, and mercilessly mocked in American Pyscho.  The very best thing about Tom Hooper's massively ambitious and mostly satisfying adaptation is the way it makes you forget about all that. Not every scene works and not every song stuns, but the entire film radiates a surprising feeling of freshness--improbably, we feel as if we're witnessing this 20-year old take on a 200-year old story for the first time.  

How does Hooper pull it off? He works with screenwriter William Nicholson to smartly streamline some of the show's famed talk-sung exposition. With the aid of a dedicated yet commendably unshowy design team, he shows us the slums of Paris as they really were, favoring grit and grime over Oscar-bait ostentation. And, most importantly, he casts seasoned screen veterans who know their way around a camera, and then---here's the clincher--records their vocals live. This ingenious decision has two beneficial effects. Firstly, it immediately relieves lifelong Les Mizzers from the duty of obsessively comparing the stage cast to the movie one. It's clear from scene one that most of these folks are imperfect singers, and that Hooper and co. won't be using digital fairy dust to alter said imperfection. Freed from the trouble of contrasting an apple with an orange, we're able to simply get lost in the timeless tale of Jean Valjean (Jackman), an escaped convict trying to raise his adopted daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) while on the run from the relentless Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). The other benefit of recording the musical numbers live is that it allows the actors, to, well, act, to authentically express the lyrics and melodies in a way that's awfully difficult to do when mouthing to a pre-recorded vocal track (see: Evita, Phantom of the Opera). Freed to sing and act all at once, this exceedingly committed cast gives it their all. Tears swell, jaws quaver. And yes, throats tense up and voices break, but for me that only heightened the experience. Hooper and his cast understand that a musical about agony should not be sung perfectly--it should be sung truthfully.

No one gets this better than Anne Hathaway. As, Cosette's ailing mother, Fantine, she's only in the movie for about the first half hour, but she's without a doubt the number one reason to see it. You've heard this from every media outlet ever, but when she takes on "I Dreamed A Dream", she doesn't just nail it, she reclaims it, wrestles it out of the hands of pop culture ubiquity and makes it ache and smart anew. Her body wracked by violent coughing, her jaw working furiously to keep her scalding anger in check, Hathaway reminds us that the song is not meant to be a power ballad--it is, for all practical purposes, a death scene, a metaphysical surrender to the encroaching darkness. Mia Thermopolis has earned her inevitable statuette. But enough fangirling--I suppose I should mention that many of the other actors are real good, too! As the tender-but-tough Valjean, Jackman makes good use of both his Oscar-host charm and Wolverine fury, and masters the taxing demands of his solos like the Broadway pro he is. As Marius, the object of adult Cosette's affection, Eddie Redmayne does star-making work, enlivening and intensifying a character who can come off as a straightforward goodie two-shoes. And I can't go without mentioning Daniel Huttlestone, a sly, scruffy wonder as the young street urchin Gavroche. He steals the show whenever he's onscreen, and, best of all, he delivers a new piece of music which helpfully clarifies that, contrary to popular belief, this show is not about the French Revolution.

This is a remarkably strong ensemble. It is not, however, a perfect one. Crowe offers a radical reinterpretation of Javert, playing him not as a villain with an introspective side but as an earnest, well-intentioned soul with a bit of a mean streak. It's a commendably unique approach, but it takes some of the air out of his confrontations with Valjean. As Cosette's conniving former foster parents, the Thernardiers, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen are on mug-for-the-camera autopilot, milking their characters' comic potential while totally ignoring their darker sides. The film is occasionally hampered by behind-the-camera mistakes as well. Like far too many modern directors, Hooper is comfortable with spectacle, but struggles with shooting a couple of people alone in a room. He stages some truly unforgettable, money's-worth set pieces (especially "Look Down" ), but he also botches some of the musical's more intimate moments by throwing in extraneous camera shake or, conversely, sticking the lens a few inches away from the actor's face. But these are, for the mostpart, quibbles. The movie stumbles over a handful of minor obstacles, but dodges most of the big ones handily. It doesn't always shepherd the beloved musical to the screen masterfully, but it still does so impressively. If you appreciate musicals, enjoy a good cry, and can stomach a few flaws, then I'd really recommend going to hear the people sing. See what I did there? Movie: B+ "I Dreamed A Dream": A+

The Guilt Trip (A Haiku) 

Babs wrings modest laughs

From lines that are not that funny

Please be my grandma

 (C+)

---
The best.....

Books I Read During 2012

EM Forster, Howards End--Bookwise, 2012 will always be the year I fell hard for the Europeans--DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. But I fell hardest of all for Forster's magnum opus, a sophisticated and deeply touching romantic drama that uses a squabble over the rightful owner of a country estate to symbolize the struggle for Britain's political future.

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks-You wouldn't expect a 400 page book about cell research to be a Potter-esque page turner, but this one is. As Skloot reports on the story of a dying black woman whose cells were taken from her body and experimented upon without her knowledge, she deals honestly and thoroughly with knotty questions of ethics and science, but smartly leaves the task of answering them up to us.

Annie Proulx, Close Range: Wyoming Stories-It's best known as the book of short stories from which "Brokeback Mountain" originated, but the other tales in this collection are equally stunning, each one a quietly tragic, darkly funny, dazzlingly poetic mini-epic of thwarted love and lingering loss.

Albums of 2012

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel---At long last, a new album from one of the ballsiest and most beguiling pop artists of the last several decades, who warbles and croons like a 30's chanteuse even as she spits out madly inventive, heavily rhythmic couplets worthy of a modern-day rapper. Sample lyric: "We can still support each other/All we gotta do's avoid each other/Nothing wrong when/a song ends/in a minor key."

Gregory Porter, Be Good--There are plenty of great vocal jazz singers out there, but few great vocal jazz writers. With his second album of soulful originals and ingenious covers, Gregory Porter reminds us that he's both.

Alabama Shakes, Boys and Girls--Forty minutes of nuts-and-bolts songwriting and clear-cut guitar riffs, blissfully free of digital overproduction or hipsterish irony. At the center of it all is Brittany Howard's one of a kind voice, a decided unladylike instrument that comes at you like a runaway freight train.

Songs of 2012

Norah Jones, "Miriam"--The highlight of Jones's comeback album is this delectably creepy electro-folk ballad in which the singer stalks and murders her husband's lover.

The Lumineers, "Stubborn Love"--This year, the founding fathers of the folk revival (Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers) released long-anticipated new albums, but they were actually bested by these scrappy Colorado up-and-comers. "Ho Hey" is getting all of (and I do mean all of) the attention, but this gorgeous ballad, which gathers aural and emotion steam before exploding into an acoustic-rock sing-along, is just as good if not better.

LP, "Into The Wild"--Like all of indie-rock goddess LP's songs, this one is so catchy that you only realize how utterly heartbreaking it is after a few listens. I wish this woman would release an LP!

There And Back Again

Merry Christmas, dear readers! I hope everyone had a wonderful apocalypse. For those who made it, I offer you some light reading to help you pass time in your underground bunker. Below is my review of the new Hobbit movie, as well as the first of my semi-popular end-of-year lists--The Most Memorable Moments of 2012. If you aren't interested in the list, enjoy the review. If you aren't interested in The Hobbit, we need to talk.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I never thought the sight of a door could move me so. Yet there I was, my throat welling up at the mere sight of the entrance to Bag End. Oh, to be reunited with that that sturdy, circular object! Oh, to gaze oncemore upon that doorknob, placed squarely and indelibly in the middle! Such is the power of Middle-Earth as imagined by Peter Jackson. Because his Lord of The Rings trilogy was such a cultural paradigm, such a monolithic, generation-defining event, every familiar face or object or strain of music that pops up in this long-awaited prequel pulsates with nostalgic emotion, charged with the kind of meaning we attribute to our own lived experiences. We know this universe. We love this universe. Thus, one of the joys of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which tells the story of Frodo's Uncle Bilbo, is seeing that universe both preserved and extended--returning to the radiant elf haven of Rivendell while being introduced to the the rough-hewn dwarf stronghold of Erebor, reacquainting ourselves with the slyly ebullient grin of Ian McKellen's Gandalf while encountering for the first time the moody, mysterious scowl of Richard Armitrage's Thorin Oakenshield.

Indeed, both preservation and extension are at the heart of the director's vision for The Hobbit, which attempts to reclaim the epic grandeur of the Rings movies while also staying true to the playful tone of the source material, which Tolkien wrote as a bedtime story for his kid. By inflating his adaptation of a 300-page novel into a trilogy,  and borrowing liberally from Tolkien's insanely detailed appendices, Jackson aims to tell a simple, sprightly tale of a hobbit and some dwarves on a quest, while also chronicling the darker, more complex events that conspired to make Frodo's walk to Mount Doom a terrifying necessity. Simply put, the movie wants to have its tonal cake and eat it too. Do Jackson and his Kiwi Crew get away with it? Yes and no. Taken individually, both the heavy material and the lighter stuff work. Chronicling the great battles and contentious councils of Middle Earth's storied past allows Jackson to remind us that he can still shoot a charging army or a mountain trek like no one else alive. It also gives him the opportunity to bring back a few welcome faces, including Cate Blanchett's luminous Galadriel, whose dialogue with Gandalf is one of the film's most poignant and memorable moments. By contrast, telling the story of Bilbo's quest (he's out to help the dwarves slay a nasty dragon) allows him to showcase his heretofore untapped knack for genuinely clever physical comedy. Fans of the novel's famed troll scene will not be disappointed, and nor will lovers of the Gollum chapter, which is brought to the screen with just the right touch of morbid wit.

However, knitting such disparate narrative threads together into one movie does have a significant and already much-criticized drawback; all that extra backstory, fascinating as it may be, impedes the momentum of the central narrative. At the film's end, we're only six chapters into The Hobbit, and consequently the film's ending gives us the impression that, for all the sound and fury of the preceding three hours, we haven't really gotten all that far. The film's other major problem is perhaps an innate one; the twelve (twelve!) dwarves Bilbo travels with just aren't as interesting or easy to empathize with as Frodo's fellowship. Still, surely Jackson could've used action or dialogue to somehow get us emotionally invested in these characters. By the end of Fellowship, almost every individual had a story and a personality. By the end of An Unexpected Journey, only Thorin has a story. Another disappointing aspect of the picture (I can't believe I'm saying this), is the score, which is bombastic and repetitive where the LOTR trilogy's was nuanced and multifarious. Quick, name more than one memorable motif from this picture. Go crazy.

Still, don't get me wrong; The Hobbit is no Phantom Menace. It's not the kind of runaway success that the previous Middle-Earth movies were, but it does succeed, and for the same reasons those movies succeeded--it employs special effects in the service of a good story, it dodges manipulative  cliche for honest emotion, and it makes good use of a dream team of committed actors--especially Martin Freeman, in whose capable hands Bilbo becomes a more dynamic and flat-out likeable character than Frodo ever was. If The Lord of The Rings was as looming and magisterial as Gandalf the White, this first part of The Hobbit is Gandalf the Grey--a bit messy and a hare less impressive, but more often than not a good deal of fun to spend time with. B.

----

 Most Memorable Moments of 2012

Personal

(You've already read enough about Barbra, so I'll leave her out. You're welcome.)

A Happening In Zilker Park--When I look back on 2012, I'll remember it as my concert year, the one where I was lucky enough to see one of my favorite bands (Coldplay) as well as my all-time favorite artist (I'm confident you can figure this one out). Sandwiched between those two indelible performances was my very first trip to a music festival. In mid-October, I journeyed to the state's capital with some of my very favorite people to attend the three day concert series/hipster convention known as Austin City Limits. On the day I attended, the madly talented, female-dominated lineup played music that miraculously mirrored the changing weather; Swedish folkies First Aid Kit strummed sweet, lyrical serenades that matched up with the gentle warmth of the day's early hours, alt-rock goddess LP and soul-jazz starlet Esperanza Spalding played with a white-hot emotional intensity that nearly outshone the blistering afternoon sun, and the ever-entrancing Florence Welch used "Cosmic Love" as an otherwordly lullaby, singing the day to sleep as that same sun set over thousands of blissed-out concertgoers. I suppose I should also mention that this was also the place where I first purchased and consumed something known as "boxed water".

Booked for the Summer--I spent a hefty chunk of my summer as Barnes and Nobles' official music cashier and de facto receptionist. It was my first time working for someone not directly related to me--and it was a doozy. It had its ups (debating Woody Allen's oeuvre with a retired movie buff) and downs (cleaning up after a customer whose liberal attitude towards bodily fluids would've made the Farrelly Brothers blush), but it was rarely boring and often entertaining. Did I mention the employee discount?

Public

The Year of The Shooting--I wrote about the Aurora shooting. I considered writing about the Wisconsin shooting, but I was still too wrung out from writing about the Aurora shooting.  I felt the need to write about the Connecticut shooting, but what was left to say after the Aurora shootings and the Wisconsin shootings and the Oregon shootings? In 2012, we lost more than mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. We lost our sense of security, our feeling that certain places--shopping malls, movie theaters, first grade classrooms--were somehow sacred, somehow inviolable. Let's hope that 2013 is the year we regain that sense of security. Let's hope it's the year I don't have to write about a single mass shooting.

Karl Rove's Meltdown--- I was tempted to choose Obama's victory speech, but I feel it's more appropriate to include this already-immortal moment in cable-news history, one that taught me the true meaning of schadenfreude. As GOP strategist Karl Rove offered an interpretation of the election results that eschewed math, statistics, and common sense, his Fox news flunkies did something incredible; they stood up and shut him down. This year, Republicans ran on a platform that, like Rove's, spat in the face of logic--one that feared gay marriage, preached knee-jerk austerity, and insisted that covering a few paltry tax reforms and haphazard cuts to health and safety were the best way to reduce our deficit. Like Rove, this year's GOP offered bad ideas. Like those Fox News hosts, the American people said "Thanks, but no thanks." As a result, my guy was re-elected, and, perhaps more importantly, many in the Republican Party are returning to Planet Earth. People like Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal are trying to steer the party back to the center, focusing on conservative solutions instead of far-right obstructionism. Obama's win is a big deal, but the way in which the other party responds to its loss may very well be just as historic.


The Olympics--As I watched Michael Phelps swim, I cheered his victories--and the fact that I'd finally found a sport worthy of my short attention span. As I watched Usain Bolt sprint into legend, I remembered that our love of a great success story is one that transcends national and cultural boundaries. And, as I watched the opening ceremony, I finally learned what happens when you combine a flash rave, a history lesson, and a fairy tale on qualuudes.

The One Where I See Barbra Streisand

Prelude

 

Before heading to the MGM Grand to make my dream come true, I had lunch with my 94-year-old Great Aunt Esther at a hole-in-the-wall deli in suburban Nevada. As with most of conversations one has with old Jewish women, this one featured plenty of inquiries about the present ("What subjects are you taking?") and common-sense suggestions for the future ("From now on, wash your hands with lemon. It does wonders, I'm telling you!"). But over the two-plus hours we dined together, the conversation kept coming back around the reason I was in town to begin with.

"I can't believe you're seeing Barbra", she said, italicizing Mrs. Streisand's name by making a sweeping gesture with her little hands. "You know, I'll never forget the first time I saw her."

Then, leaning in conspiratorially--her favorite way to begin any story--she told me what she remembered. She grew up in a cramped New Jersey household with seven siblings, a chornically ill mother, and an Orthodox Rabbi for a father. Not surprisingly, theirs was a supremely religious abode; murmured prayers were a constant, and the hum of the newfangled television was a rarity.

"But Papa made an exception for Barbra", she said wistfully. "We watched all her TV specials, everything she was in. When he listened to her sing 'Happy Days Are Here Again', Papa was in awe. He said 'Kids, you need to watch this'. He said it sounded a little bit like davening." Davening, for those who don't know, refers to the entrancing lilt with which Jewish clergymen and women intone prayers. In other words, Esther's father believed what many of Barbra's most ardent fans believe--that her voice isn't just one of the wonders of our world, it's somehow otherworldly. She sings like Shakespeare wrote, like Liszt played, not just beautifully but somehow transcendentally. In an uncharacteristic burst of eloquence, fellow fan Rosie O'Donnell put it this way: "She's definitely channeling something. She's a huge satellite dish."

We love Barbra for her rags-to-riches story, her striking individuality, her groundbreaking charity work, and her status as one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood's Musical Golden Age. But most of all, we love That Voice. We love its unmatched tonal purity, its unimpeachable sense of rhythm. We marvel at its versatility, the way it can tackle a Hebrew hymn or a Stevie Wonder tune with equal success. We stand in awe of its burnished lower register, and break out into goosebumps as it slides seamlessly into the upper octaves, never once cracking or breaking. We tear up at the miniscule but monumentally important details, at the poignant pause during a ballad or the bitter laugh during a torch song. And, of course, we piss our pants when it goes for those high notes, neither scooping up to them or riffing them into incoherence but hitting them with all the clarity and profound power of a church bell.

What do we do when we aren't busy worshiping the voice? Bitch about how hard it is to hear live. After she flubbed lyrics and faced down assassination threats at her famed 1968 Central Park concert, Streisand ceased performing live altogether, showing her face only for the occasional thousands-of-dollars-per-seat fundraiser. Determined to overcome her iconic stage fright, she embarked on some hugely successful touch-and-go tour dates in the mid-to-late 90's, and in 2006, she mounted her first ever big-time world tour at the age of sixty-three--a tour that, as luck would have it, culminated mere months before I watched Funny Girl, the gateway drug to my full-on Streisand addiction. So, when she announced that she'd be embarking on another tour in 2012, I went meshugenah for two reasons; because it was her first tour since I fell in love with her, and because, with the singer pushing seventy, it might very well be her last. Damned if I'd let seeing my musical idol in concert crop up on my list of could woulda shoulda's, I scraped together some of my savings, assembled an itinerary, and, called up an equally ardent Streisand fan by the name of "Mom". Three months later I was at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, waiting with bated breath to see Barbra Streisand perform live. Just me, my mother, and 12,000 of our closest friends.

Those friends, by the way, came in all shapes and sizes. There was the young Polish woman who grew up with A Star Is Born, the Japanese couple treating themselves for their anniversary, and even a couple Real Housewives of New Jersey lookalikes who sent my blood pressure soaring to untold levels when they attempted to jack our seats. Mostly though, there were Jewish Women of A Certain Age (JWCA), the kind Mike Myers made fun of so brilliantly in his Linda Richman SNL sketches. These were the true fans--the ones who knew which album came out when, who brandished comprehensive lists of Barbra's dreamy male co-stars, who'd committed her family tree to memory. As I listened to them, I was occasionally tempted to interject, to make my own contribution to their Encyclopedia Streisandia. Indeed, my interest level in their conversations grew so high that I feared for a moment that I might leave the building as a JWCA, adjusting my shawl and muttering about how they got the lox-to-bagel ratio wrong. My fears turned out to be wholly unfounded--I did, thank God, remain a twenty-year old boy, albeit one who screamed like a thirteen-year-old girl when the overture ended and a spotlight came up to reveal Streisand standing center stage, mic in hand.

Act I

After what seemed like a yearlong standing ovation, the orchestra cued up, and Streisand stepped forward for her first song, the titular tune from her 1971 film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. It's one of the Big Guns in Barbra's Greatest Hits Arsenal, and as she eased into the opening lines, I bet we were all wondering the same thing; could she still nail the song's famous belt-it-to-the-rafter climax? A few minutes later, we had our answer; absolutely. The Voice was still there, a realization I emphasized by tapping my mother on the shoulder so hard she almost fell out of her seat. Not surprisingly, Barbra remained in complete control of her craft. What was surprising, however, was her newfound ability to cut loose. Streisand, long known for her slavish adherence to the script, no longer seemed like the imposing diva who's rehearsed every little note and gesture to death; with a handful of wildly successful live tours under her belt, she's noticeably more relaxed, still decidedly the Reigning Queen of Song, but also more than willing to come down off her pedestal every now and then to commiserate with the commoners. She cooed at a youngster in the crowd ("Oh, sweetie...this is a three-hour show. I hope you don't get sleepy!"), cracked wise about the famous to-the-left-of-left political beliefs ("Now, I wouldn't dream of telling you who to vote for..."), and even paused multiple times just to thank us for being there ("Touring isn't easy for me, but you guys make it so gratifying..."). As a long-time fan, it was positively thrilling to see Barbra open up like this; nearly forty-five years after Central Parkgate, she's finally learned to love live performance, finally developed a knack for working a crowd.

It sounds strange to say, but I was proud of her. After all, part of the magic of Streisand is that her persona invites such intense identification--her triumphs and tribulations become your own. When she dedicated a stripped-down version of "The Way We Were" to its late composer, Marvin Hamlisch, her grief was palpable, and her very real ache filled the room. Her "Smile" was so pure and playful that by the end of it we were all just as full of sap-free happy juice as she seemed to be. The most interesting iteration of this effect for me, however, occurred during "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered", an old Rodgers-and-Hart chestnut that she first performed during the New York City jazz club dates that launched her career. To watch Streisand perform this song was to catch her in the fascinating act of watching herself, of thinking back to the days when she was merely a gawky Brooklyn kid with a big nose and bigger voice trying to make it to the top. She was lost in the revery of her past, and so were we, if the ten seconds of silence before the standing ovation were any indication. And, of course, when she closed the first act with "Don't Rain On My Parade", we were right there alongside her, riding high on the here-I-am-world thrill of the ultimate underdog anthem. Admittedly, she now delivers it less like a spitfire up-and-comer and more like the world's most belligerent Grandma, but when she reaches that climax, no one cares. Thousands of theatre kids have belted out this anthem in their cars, but no singer of any caliber can do it quite like Barbra, can come at those final phrases with such dizzyingly emphatic energy:

"Nobody, no no-body
Is gonna-
Rain on my-
ParaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAde!!"

The lights go crazy. The orchestra goes for broke. The crowd goes wild. I have a series of small seizures. End Act I.

Act II

The second act began with a double whammy, featuring both the show's funniest moment and one of its most touching. Before Streisand returned to the stage, the video screens descended, but instead of the interviews or photo montages that normally precede her second acts, we got a YouTube video of--you guessed it--Duck Sauce's "Barbra Streisand", a techno smash that pokes glib hipster fun at the iconic diva. Even if it left some of the older crowd looking as if they'd wandered into the wrong part of the hotel, it was an appreciable nod to her younger fans, and a welcome display of self-deprecating humour from the woman who once insisted that she be photographed only from her "good side". As the last strands of the Duck Sauce song faded away, the screens transitioned to something a little older; the final scene from Funny Girl, with Barbra's Fanny Brice character getting dumped by Omar Sharif's Nick mere minutes before she's due onstage for a concert. Sitting in her dressing room in shock, Fanny sweeps back her hair, blinks away the tears, and marshals her remaining strength--after all, the show must go on. Then, as the twenty-five year old Barbra onscreen walked onstage to perform "My Man", the lights came up on the real stage, and there stood seventy-year-old Barbra, singing the opening bars of the same song. 

It was magic, pure and simple, and so was her rendition of the tune. Over forty years later, she still tears into this greatest of torch songs with all she's got, leaning into that surging finale ("The world is bright/Alriiiiiiight!") with enough force to prompt a mid-song outburst of applause and holding that final note a few seconds longer than the orchestra just to prove she can. It was an indelible highlight of the evening, and just one of the countless moments that left me in awe of a voice that still throbbed with the power and potency most singers start to lose in their mid-50's. If anything, she sounded even better than she did during her last tour, having settled into the deeper, warmer timbre that's come with age. This was clearest of all during her heartfelt rendition of her signature song, "People", performed with a slower, string-driven arrangement that allowed her to really belt out that penultimate portion like never before. Of course, the Streisand magic isn't just in the Big High Notes, it's in the little details as well. She turned "My Funny Valentine" into a deeply haunting tragedy in miniature, using her exquisite legato to turn words like "favorite" and ""smart" into self-contained pleas. On "How Deep Is The Ocean?", a duet with none other than her son Jason, she pulled back, delivering Irving Berlin's lyrics with soft, honeyed, unforced affection. On "Here's To Life", she drew out the final phrases, doing justice to the song's celebratory lyrics by offering up each word like a little toast.

When it comes to singing, every lyric is a symbol, and Streisand, like all great vocalists, makes us understand what those symbols mean.

Never was this truer than during the evening's sterling finale. I swear, if the prior two hours had been a combination Justin Bieber-Ke$ha concert, it still would've been worth the exorbitant ticket prices just to see Barbra perform her eleven o' clock number. You'd expect one of her chart-topping hits. But among Barbra's innumerable talents is a knack for surprise, and she didn't disappoint. Instead, she trotted out "Make Our Garden Grow", a poignant Leonard Bernstein ballad that she recorded in the early 90's but never released. About half a decade after she committed it to wax, it made its way onto the internet, eventually becoming a fan favorite--and a personal favorite of mine. You don't expect your favorite artist to sing a song of theirs that never even technically saw the light of day, but there she was singing it all the same. I couldn't help but think of that old Tennessee Williams quote; "Sometimes there's God so quickly." The song, taken from the musical adaptation of Candide, is as touching as anything ever written for the theatre, a full-throated ode to the small, fragile joys that keep us afloat throughout life's raging storm;

"We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow."

Gently caressing the song's tender opening passages, Barbra built smartly and steadily to the operatic conclusion, delivering that earth-shaking final note with her singular power--the kind that, in Richard Rodgers' words, resembles nothing so much as "the lift of a climbing bird." Then, amidst an eruption of applause, she segued seamlessly into one of her greatest hits, "Somewhere", just as deeply affecting and defiantly hopeful as it was when she recorded it for The Broadway Album thirty long years ago. For those who were curious, here's where the tears finally fell. And here's where the crowd shot up out of their seats for the loudest ovation of the night.

After a seemingly endless series of bows, Streisand briefly vanished from the stage, then returned for two encores. The first was "Happy Days Are Here Again", which she famously duetted on with the late Judy Garland. Here, Barbra invited her sister Roslyn onstage to sing Judy's part, and their interplay was endearing as it was adorably genuine. The final tune was "Some Other Time"--a jazz standard like the kind a teenaged Barbra used to perform in crowded piano bars tucked away on bustling street corners. As I listened to the wistful lyrics ("Just when the fun is starting/Comes the time for parting"), I reflected back on the evening that was. It wasn't a perfect one; bringing along popera phenoms Il Volo to sing backup didn't detract from the show, but it didn't add much either, and it seemed rather silly to invite trumpeter Chris Botti along without having he and Barbra perform any of the pieces they've recorded together. But perfection was never what I was looking for. I wanted confirmation--confirmation that this woman who's inspired, intrigued, and moved me so was just as peerless onstage as she was on screen and on record. By the end of the night, I had that assurance and then some.  

Here she is, I thought as she took her final bow. Here's the woman whose voice got me into singing, and whose extraordinary story reminds me and countless others that marching to the beat of one's own drum isn't a mark of shame but a badge of honor. Here she is. And there I was, the luckiest person in the world.