Review: A Sensational Bernadette Peters Toasted the New Year with the Boston Pops

Is it fair to call her Saint Bernadette? What else is there to say about Bernadette Peters, an artist who gets better and better with time? With her numerous concert appearances, such as her sensational one with the Boston Pops on New Years Eve, she continues her commitment to forward the legacy of her friend and colleague, the late Stephen Sondheim. You could even consider her nearly hour-long set a pre-Broadway tryout of what Broadway audiences will see this Spring when she stars in "Old Friends," a new Sondheim revue she premiered in London last year.

With the orchestra conducted by her musical director, Joseph Thalkin, the concert marked a return to the Pops for Peters, who most recent appearance was opening their 2019 season. Since 1991, when she sang "Broadway Baby" with John Williams leading the orchestra, Peters has appeared 11 times over eight seasons. Judging from response of the sold-out Symphony Hall audience, she remains a beloved guest.

What makes her Sondheim interpretations so meaningful is how she shapes each song as if they are a one-act play, finding fresh meanings in the lyrics that she conveys with her supple contralto. While a lot has changed since she last appeared with the Pops, she makes appear as if time has stood still. In interviews, she doesn't talk about age, so we won't either; suffice to say she looked amazing, maintaining her iconic silhouette enhanced by a copper-hued gown. And as she greeted the audience with "Old Friends," she made it seem as if this Sondheim favorite was written for that moment. Such is the intimate bond she creates.

Her saucy sense of humor was present in a number of songs not written by Sondheim – a show-stopping "There is Nothing Like A Dame" in which she took the male-centered lyric and turned it into a campy, feminist anthem, and "Fever," the sultry Peggy Lee hit that she sang while lying prone on the piano. But her focus was largely on a number of Sondheim classics, in which she conveyed that subtle mix of acting and singing that he admired so much.

Peters' second Broadway career began with a pair of Sondheim musicals: "Sunday in the Park with George" and "Into the Woods." While she didn't touch upon any songs from the former, her reading of "No One Is Alone," the gorgeous epiphany of "Into The Woods," is damn near perfect, expressing the song's touching ambivalence in a beautifully measured way. In addition the roles she played in those musicals (Dot/Marie in "Sunday" and the Witch in "Woods"), she has played most of Sondheim's leading ladies, including Sally Durant Plummer in "Follies," Rose Hodiak in "Gypsy," and Desiree Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music," and at Carnegie Hall she played Faye Apple in a concert version of "Anyone Can Whistle." They comprise a pretty rich variety of characters for her to reference in her concert interpretation, and her stage performances only informed her touching readings of "Losing My Mind" ("Follies") and "Send in the Clowns" ("Night Music").

Her splendid pairing of "With So Little To Be Sure Of" (from "Anyone Can Whistle") and "Children Will Listen" (which she introduced in "Into the Woods") showed Sondheim at his most melodic and profound. She also included a wistful "Anyone Can Whistle" and a driving "Being Alive" (from "Company") that showed her classic belt is in great shape. And it was fitting that she included Rodgers and Hammerstein's "It Might As Well Be Spring," one of the few Oscar Hammerstein lyrics that suggest Sondheim's famous ambivalence, conveyed in Peters' sadly resigned take. She also touched upon her having played Dolly Levi in the last revival of "Hello, Dolly!" with a knock-out "Before the Parade Passes By."

Since the death of Barbara Cook, Peters has assumed the mantle of Sondheim's greatest interpreters, doing so with a deep emotional commitment and rich understanding of each song's inner dynamic. That subtle mix of singing and acting that Sondheim admired so much has only gotten better. And, for her encore, Peters led the room with a heartfelt "Auld Lang Syne" – a beautiful footnote to a beautiful concert.

In the first half, the orchestra, led by the convivial Troy Quinn, set the stage for Ms. Peters with selections from Broadway and Hollywood that offered ample proof as to why the Pops remain such an iconic institution. It was fun to hear the clever Easter Eggs dropped in the orchestrations of "Hooray for Hollywood" and "42nd Street," as well as the enjoyable bombast of "The Phantom of the Opera" overture. The orchestra harkened back to the days of Arthur Fiedler with the jazzy "Pink Panther" theme, and gave a John Williams-like sweep to the little-known "Through The Eyes of Love," the theme from 1978's "Ice Castles" by Marvin Hamlisch. And who cannot succumb to the brassy overture to the Broadway musical "Mame?"

This concert capped a great year for the Pops, highlighted by innovative programming during the Spring season, such as an overview of 21st century Broadway and a Pride concert featuring the unbeatable Thorgy Thor, a towering "RuPaul's Drag Race" alum who is also a classically trained violinist, who was so hilarious that you imagine Fiedler would have smiled.