Streisand would be proud: Ann Hampton Callaway and The Boston Pops soar at the Mahaffey

She'd told me during our interview that one of the lessons she'd learned from working with Streisand (Callaway has composed songs for her and helped write patter for one of her rare live concerts) is how to be a "singing actress." Her rendition of "The Way We Were" was an excellent example. Far from being an imitation of Streisand, her version was thoughtful, almost meditative. In the lyric "Memories can be beautiful, and yet …" she lingers on the "and yet" — suggesting more vividly than the song usually does that the pleasures of nostalgia can only take you so far.

Callaway's astonishing range — from dark caramel tones to crystalline high notes — was in full force in numbers like "At the Same Time," a passionate plea for empathy that she wrote with Streisand in mind (and 10 years to the day she wrote it, she told the audience, Streisand did indeed record it). "When I stand up there and get ready to deliver these lyrics that I wrote," she told me during our interview, "I feel like l’m listening to the universe." That might sound a bit lofty, but in performance that's exactly the feeling she conveyed — as if she were trying to embrace us all.

Streisand's Oscar-winning "Evergreen" got a surprisingly swingin' re-arrangement. Another smart choice: following the ethereal "On a Clear Day" with "Happy Days Are Here Again," two divergent takes on the prospect of clear skies ahead. But it was another pairing that was the emotional high point of the evening: "People," the song Streisand first made famous in Funny Girl, followed by "Being Alive" from Sondheim's Company.

Calloway had told me an interesting anecdote: Streisand was at first uncomfortable with the lyric "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." She told composer Jule Styne that she thought people who don’t need people are the luckiest people. But Callaway thinks that Streisand's feelings have evolved since then, as have her own.

"I have tried to be as open and loving as I can, but certain parts of me unknowingly have been closed." So "People," for her is about "the moment of self-revelation when you realize what’s missing in your life — when you’re ready to ask for things that are maybe messy and you're ready to embrace it all, the gorgeous and the ugly. It takes a tremendous amount of courage for any human to do that." Paired with Sondheim's wrenching plea for human connection, the medley is "a little two-act play about people becoming alive."

Sound like a lot for a couple of pop songs to contain? Well, I would wager that everyone in the audience was right there with her for every moment of that little two-act play, a reimagining of two very well-known songs that shed new light on both.

"'People' — it is her song, period. No one has come close," she told me. "I wasn’t about to try to do something better. I wanted to do something true."

That she did.