A Diva’s Adieu

If there’s ever an occasion for unbridled self-absorption, it’s a diva’s farewell tour, and Cher’s three-month adieu to her role as a concert singer is every bit the over-the-top extravaganza her fans demand.

“OK, so, well, here I am,” Cher said early in the show at Staples Center on Tuesday, summoning waves of adulation from the crowd. That existential epigram, with its Valley girl cadence, pretty much summed it all up.

A diva is a diva for many reasons, but one of the essentials is that she’s survived adversity and keeps bouncing back.

But really, what has Cher survived? At least Liza Minnelli, today’s uber-diva, has endured a dysfunctional family, nonelective surgery and substance-abuse problems. Cher? Mainly bad press and bad boyfriends.

It’s been good tabloid material, and maybe that’s enough for divadom in these lean times, but it’s not the stuff of true triumph and grand tragedy. As if to compensate, the concert (which was also scheduled to stop at the Arrowhead Pond on Wednesday) worked hard to inflate her life into something epic.

Cher (at that moment blond and clad in a sort of harem outfit) was actually genuine and amusing in her initial spoken comments, when she playfully shushed the crowd’s objection to her retirement plans by saying, “I’ve been a frickin’ evil diva for 40 frickin’ years.”

This “real” Cher is the one that makes her the most human and self-deprecating member of the sisterhood, but she was gone pretty early, sucked into the machinery of Las Vegas-ized production numbers packed with dancers and Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatic action.

The show traced the life of Cher from flower child to pop-art fashion plate and TV star. A long montage of clips from her movies culminated in her winning an Oscar, and excerpts from TV interviews depicted her as bright, genuine, misunderstood and unsullied by cheek implants.

There might be a reason that the emphasis was on media other than music. Despite a dusky, husky voice that has a natural appeal in its natural mode, and despite a long list of hit records to her name, her impact as a pop singer has been negligible.

Her best moments as a singer Tuesday came on ‘60s-era folk-rock from the Sonny & Cher days, notably her radiant version of Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do.” But most of the songs were calls to calisthenics rather than interpretive challenges, dominated by thumping synthetic rock derived from dance and disco.

On her recent albums, the main function of the dense music is to corral her wildly erratic singing. On stage it was primarily to push her voice to full power, keeping it afloat and away from the dangers of dynamic variation, phrasing and other methods singers use to create nuance and interpret a lyric.

But the songs weren’t really the point. They were just one more prop in the celebration of all things Cher. The presentation might not have explained exactly why she enjoys the status she does, but divadom doesn’t necessarily stem from rational sources. It’s a self-perpetuating state, sustained by an unspoken agreement between audience and icon--you act like a diva and we’ll treat you like one. And Cher is acting like one all the way to the final curtain.

Cyndi Lauper’s presence as the opening act was an incongruous contrast in many ways, like a grainy old “Our Gang” comedy on a double feature with “Star Wars.”

An ‘80s flash in the pan with nothing much going these days, the New Yorker simply took over the arena on sheer determination. She created a genuine feeling of community with the audience and used her quirky, powerful voice to generate both touching moments and rousing release. It may have all been aged material, but Lauper delivered it fresh.