Mouskouri bids adieu with sentimental style

Two hours into her show at Symphony Hall on Friday night, at a point where the hardiest of hard rockers would have been drooping, Nana Mouskouri spread the wings of her spangled white gown and commenced a medley of songs from the golden age of cinema.

She had chugged no beer or water, no roadies had ministered to her with fresh towels, and yet the 72-year-old songbird remained serenely vital. True, there had been a brief intermission -- but that was more for our benefit than hers, a chance for us to gather our wits after her rip-roaring cover version (in French) of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Le Ciel Est Noir."

Nana is pure class. On this, her Farewell Tour, she is visiting one last time with the fans who powered the commercial juggernaut of her '60s and '70s heyday. "Thank you for taking care of me for so many years," she said. "I think we all need love -- you too, as well as me up on the stage." Love is part of Nana's brand, so to speak: during her set she also mentioned hope, joy, sorrow, and the dreams of children rising like white birds into the fingers of angels. Another part of her brand is, of course, visual -- the square-framed eyeglasses and twin swoops of hair (still black) that constitute a trademark quite as bold and abstract as Groucho Marx's.

"Plaisirs d' Amour," "Try to Remember," "Love Changes Everything" -- the well-dressed audience was quietly ecstatic, now and again raising a ghostly croon as it murmured along. Nana's tuxedo'd six-piece band was as disciplined as a firing-squad, but gentle too: When her timing wandered (which it did) she was discreetly accommodated, and if one of her monologues began to ramble we would hear, like a warning bell, the humid shimmer of a bouzouki.

Easy listening and soft sentiments, but as she rolled through "Le Ciel Est Noir," her voice gaining a triumphant, vindictive, almost Piaf-like stridor, we had a hint of what has kept this remarkable woman on top for so long.