Streisand Opens Two-Night Stand at BankAtlantic Center

Barbra Streisand walked out from behind the curtain at BankAtlantic Center shortly after 8 p.m. Saturday night to a standing ovation that lasted long enough for her to wave it off twice. It was her first Broward County concert, the opening night of a two-show Sunrise run, and the latest stop on a North American tour the 64-year-old singer had said for years she would never make.

The tour, billed simply as Streisand, opened in early October in Philadelphia and is built around an orchestra of more than fifty musicians under conductor Marvin Hamlisch, longtime tenor Il Divo as opening act and special guests, and a set list that moves between Streisand standards — "The Way We Were," "Evergreen," "People" — and selections from her recent albums. The Saturday show in Sunrise ran roughly two and a half hours with intermission.

BankAtlantic Center, normally the home of the Florida Panthers and a long string of arena rock and pop tours, took on a different feel for the engagement. The lower bowl filled early. Concession lines were short during the opening set. Ushers in the upper levels handed out programs printed for the tour rather than the usual single-fold arena flyers. Tickets had moved quickly when they went on sale in the summer, with the most expensive seats well into four-figure resale territory by the week of the show.

The concert is one of the highest-profile entertainment events Broward County has hosted this year, alongside the Rolling Stones' winter visit and the run of arena tours that have moved through Sunrise since the building opened in 1998. For the City of Sunrise and Broward tourism officials, the two-night Streisand stand is the kind of booking that lets the arena compete directly with American Airlines Arena down in Miami for marquee acts.

For central and west Broward residents driving home up Sawgrass Expressway after the show, the takeaway from Saturday night was less about any single song than about the room itself. A 20,000-seat arena built for hockey crowds and rock concerts had quieted down completely for an extended ballad, then come back to its feet for an encore. Streisand returns to BankAtlantic Center for the second and final South Florida show on Sunday night.