Sondheim, Etc.: Bernadette Peters Live at Carnegie Hall

This live concert from 1997, a benefit for the Gay Men's Health Crisis, was Bernadette Peters's Carnegie Hall debut, and it's a joy. Peters has always had a special affinity for the music of Stephen Sondheim, and she spotlights some of his best songs, only a few of them from the shows she's best known for, Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with George. The program is part career retrospective--including non-Sondheim selections from Mack and Mabel and Dames at Sea--and part wish list, which provides a forum for Peters's pouty humor ("In this movie [Dick Tracy], this song was sung by a blonde bombshell... not me. Although we both have religious names."). She's backed by a full orchestra conducted by Marvin Laird, who also directed Peters's similar program a year later at London's Royal Festival Hall (captured on VHS and DVD). The very appreciative and knowing audience (there's applause at the first words of Dames' "Raining in My Heart") includes Stephen Sondheim himself. No doubt he was very proud. --David Horiuchi