Viva la diva! (Not so much Il Divo)

Barbra Streisand is Elvis Presley without the swivel hips, the Beatles if they’d stuck to show tunes, Aretha Franklin as a Jewish mameleh from Brooklyn. She’s the killer queen of old-school pop in the rock and soul era, and she brought her jubilee tour home Monday to Staples Center.

Closing her third “final tour” in front of a hand-picked celebrity audience -- and thousands of “paying customers” in the not-so-cheap seats (“I shall spend it wisely,” their sovereign said of the ticket haul, promising to donate proceeds to charity), Streisand name-dropped, told terrible jokes and sang her way through an oddly structured set list. And she was simply amazing.

Streisand’s vocal gift, like Presley’s or Franklin’s, has the power to obliterate every other aspect of her being: Singing, she becomes some kind of archetype, and all the human stuff, while still important, becomes secondary. Between songs, Streisand presented herself as a particular, if larger-than-life, woman; she fleshed out her various personas (Malibu matron, liberal agitator, doting mom, born-in-a-trunk trouper) with cozy confidence. But hitting every note and shading on such showstoppers as “The Way We Were,” she let her image give way to the deeper force that both feeds and eclipses those particulars.

Now that she’s 64, Streisand’s tone remains pure as the dawn, her phrasing unmatched. Only a few modified high notes and extra pauses for breath hinted at mortality. Swinging through the 1937 E.Y. “Yip” Harburg-Harold Arlen tune “Down With Love” or nailing the dramatic arc in Billy Barnes’ “(Have I Stayed) Too Long at the Fair,” one of a few featured songs she hadn’t sung onstage for decades, Streisand’s voice told a story more primal and compelling than the uplifting rhetoric she read from the TelePrompTer between numbers. It’s the resonance of introspection: The blend of intimacy and showiness in Streisand’s voice turns her performances into portraits of the heart and mind in self-discovery.

It’s this naked, forming quality -- something she can access, it’s tempting to say, because she was born into the rock ‘n’ roll generation that her repertoire almost entirely ignores -- that makes even Streisand’s most familiar songs eternally fresh. She sprinkled the first half of her 2 1/2 -hour set with those hits; the crowd sat in rapt silence as she offered up “Evergreen” and a graceful medley of songs from “Funny Girl.”

The second half featured some more challenging material, including the arty “Unusual Way” from “Nine,” with only a few signature songs. The crowd didn’t seem disappointed but did grow a little restive -- until the set’s end, when a grand finale of “Somewhere” (from “West Side Story”) and her trademark take on “Happy Days Are Here Again” drove them back to their feet.

The faith Streisand has in her own singing, made obvious by her fearless approach to big notes and her fondness for melodically tricky compositions, didn’t keep her from cutting short songs with banter, and sometimes worse. A notorious skit involving a George W. Bush impersonator, the cause of much anger among conservatives since her tour opened last month in Philadelphia, turned out to be subpar “Saturday Night Live” fodder, and far too long. Streisand’s name-checking of famous friends titillated -- she had incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stand up for the cameras, and there was Bill Maher right behind her! -- but it also seemed self-aggrandizing. Little waves and exclamations of “Hi, Barry” (Gibb? Diller?) were unnecessary reminders of the fancy world Streisand calls home.

The orchestra was conducted with an admirably light touch by Bill Ross, never even coming close to overshadowing the star. The less said the better about Il Divo, the classical-lite vocal quartet that joined Streisand on a few songs and sang a mini-set partway into Streisand’s first act. It’s obvious why she selected them -- they’re upscale backup singers, and as “classical” artists, they allowed Streisand to nod toward a realm she enjoys but only rarely enters. But the Teflon men of Il Divo provided nothing Streisand couldn’t have accessed on her own, and their lung-pumping delivery often clashed with her style. Handsome? Yes. But as Funny Girl Streisand herself proved decades ago -- and again Monday -- pretty ain’t worth nothing next to genuine soul.

ann.powers@latimes.com