Streisand’s 4 Canceled Shows Now Set for July

Thursday will now be opening night for Barbra Streisand’s celebrated Anaheim Pond concert engagement, and four shows postponed this week have been rescheduled to July, the singer’s manager announced.

The engagement will pick up as scheduled with the Thursday performance and one June 4 in Anaheim, and Streisand will return to the Pond after engagements in San Jose and New York next month to make up the missed performances, said Marty Erlichman, her manager.

“I feel terrible that these postponements may cause severe scheduling problems for so many of my fans who have waited for so long for me to perform live,” Streisand, who has suffered from viral tracheolaryngitis for nearly a week, said in a written statement released late Thursday.

Many fans had flown to Southern California from across the country specifically for the Streisand concerts, which had been scheduled to begin last Wednesday.

Though Streisand had hoped to be well enough to begin the Anaheim shows tonight, Erlichman announced that the singer’s doctors advised her to postpone tonight’s show as well as scheduled appearances Sunday and Tuesday.

Tickets for the four postponed shows will be honored on July 18, 20, 22 and 24.

If needed, refunds for the postponed shows will be made at points of purchase beginning Tuesday for full face value and Ticketmaster’s service fee, officials said.

The change of dates means that Streisand’s tour--her first in nearly three decades and, she says, her last--presumably will end at the Pond. The notoriously stage-shy performer had been scheduled to end the six-city tour at New York’s Madison Square Garden in June.

Speculation had been that any postponed shows would be made up between planned June 7 and 9 shows in San Jose and the start of Streisand’s run at New York’s Madison Square Garden beginning June 20.

But when it became necessary to move four Anaheim shows, that became impossible because of Streisand’s refusal to perform on consecutive nights and because of the time needed to take her elaborate stage sets across the country.