After 22 Years, Streisand Returns to Live Concerts : Music: Singer performs before 13,000 people. Michael Jackson makes a surprise appearance, along with Steven Spielberg and Michael Milken.

In a town built on the concept of risk, Barbra Streisand proved on New Year’s Eve to be the ultimate pop high roller.

Combatting the stage fright that has kept her from concerts for 22 years, the singer returned to live shows with a triumphant performance before 13,000 people in the MGM Grand Hotel’s Grand Garden arena.

It was an elegant two-hour affair that won her six standing ovations and set a U.S. record for a pop concert gross.

Julie Edler, an Army production assistant from Salt Lake City, said she paid $500 Thursday for a $400 ticket to Friday’s show, the first of two weekend performances by Streisand.

“Never in my whole life did I think I’d see her live,” said Edler, 41, who lined up hours before the arena doors opened at 6 p.m. so she could be the first concert-goer into the building.

“I had to be here. What if she doesn’t feel comfortable on stage and decides to never do another concert?”

The start of the show was delayed an hour beyond the scheduled starting time of 8 p.m. because everyone except VIPs had to go through a single entrance that for security purposes was lined with airport-style metal detectors.

Backed by a 64-piece orchestra conducted by Marvin Hamlisch, Streisand wove more than two dozen songs--from signature hits such as “People” and “The Way We Were” to a number from the new stage musical “Sunset Boulevard”--into a series of autobiographical vignettes that touched on childhood dreams, relationships, family ties and social optimism.

For someone whose stage manner was once called humorless and aloof, the singer--who has concentrated for the last two decades on recordings and films--was consistently warm and often witty as she proceeded through a scripted show, aided by TelePrompTers.

The concert was originally scheduled to be taped for a television special but those plans were canceled because Streisand felt the cameras would detract from the concert experience.

The evening’s biggest surprise was when Streisand was joined on stage by Mike Myers, the “Saturday Night Live” comedian.

He was in the guise of alter ego Linda Richman, an obsessed Streisand fan whose adoration is expressed in an exaggerated Long Island accent. Streisand joined in the fun as they bantered like longtime chums.

Despite rumors last week that President and Mrs. Clinton would celebrate the evening by attending the concert, they were not on hand.

However, Virginia Clinton Kelley, the President’s mother, did watch from a front-row seat and was introduced to the crowd, along with Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Other celebrities ranged from the film world’s Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Peter Bogdanovich and Sydney Pollack to the music world’s Quincy Jones, Prince and Michael Crawford.

The celebrity surprise at a second show given Saturday was Michael Jackson, who took his seat near the stage, along with Steven Spielberg and Michael Milken. Jackson acknowledged the crowd’s cheers with a shy wave.

Hotel officials have refused to say how much Friday’s and Saturday’s shows grossed, but industry insiders believe it to be more than $6 million per show.

That’s more than twice any previous pop gross, including rock stadium dates that sometimes attract up to 90,000 fans. The average gross for a 12,000- to 18,000-seat arena sellout in 1993 was about $700,000.

Concert souvenir merchandise, ranging from $100 bottles of Streisand-signature champagne to $25 T-shirts, were expected to generate more than $1.5 million alone--another record for a single event.

Tickets for the two concerts were priced from $50 to $1,000, with 4,000 of the seats each night at the top level. The average price was more than $500.

Some fans reportedly paid brokers three and four times face value for choice seats.

Even so, there didn’t appear to be any grumbling over the high prices for the shows, which were designed in part as a test for a possible national Streisand tour.

Sherry Baldwin, 44, and her husband flew in from Long Island and she wasn’t even upset that their $300 seats were 10 rows from the rear wall--about as far as you could be from Streisand and still be in the building.

“I saw her in ‘Funny Girl’ on Broadway, but it has been so long since she has done concerts that I thought the odds of seeing her again were a million to one.

“I always said, though, that if she does a show, I’d be there--and here I am.”

* STREISAND REVIEW: Robert Hilburn’s review of Barbra Streisand at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas will appear in Monday’s Calendar section.