Concert 'Pops' With Bernadette In Conte

As guests filtered into Boston College's 17th Annual Pops on the Heights, they were met with a unique atmosphere that is usually quite unknown to Conte Forum. Students, ditching the sweatshirts and jeans, milled about in formal attire as they chatted with their visiting relatives and family friends. Indeed, Conte Forum traded in Akon's patented "Konvict Music" for a classy evening of symphony tunes by the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra conducted by Keith Lockhart, stylings from the University Chorale of Boston College, and the ebullient performance by Bernadette Peters.

The first act of the Pops performance exhibited exemplary precision and form, as the Orchestra tackled familiar classics like "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy and the waltz from Carousel. Then the Pops Orchestra combined forces with the BC Chorale in "This Land is Your Land" creating a tour de force of music. The end of the opening act featured a video tribute to BC sports, rallying the school spirit of the young and old with clips from classic football, hockey, and basketball games.

Peters was a particularly exciting choice for any musical aficionado (or even those who appreciated her guest appearance on Ugly Betty), as she has had an extensive career with lead roles in classics such as Steven Sondheim's Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park With George, Annie Get Your Gun, and Gypsy, to name just a few. Her voice has a brassy clarity with an impish bent to it that is really incomparable to those of the usual sugarcoated pop singers. Peters did not fall short of her reputation as Broadway queen in the second act. Unquestionably, as soon as she stepped onto the stage in a cream strapless dress embroidered with sequin upon sequin, she owned both the stage and room, putting the glow sticks, confetti and balloons at the very end to sahme. Her set covered everything from "There's Nothing Like a Dame" and "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific, to "Fever," to the touching "No One is Alone" from Into the Woods. During her rendition of "Fever," Peters made herself comfortable onstage by draping herself over the piano, a move that few performers can authentically pull off without appearing tawdry. Tawdriness be damned, by the end of "Fever" the audience was hanging on her every note. Peters also kept her dialogue with the audience sweet and playful, some examples of her bon-mots were, "Boy, the real-estate market isn't great right now … Maybe I'm just thinking about it because I have a vacation home on the market. Not that I'd try to sell it to you from the stage..." Well Bernadette, by the end of your performance the audience would likely have bought whatever you had tried to sell. By the end of the evening, the show became a veritable financial success, raising over $2 million for scholarship funding, and an artistic one to boot, raising the bar for Parents' Weekend festivities for years to come. n