It’s official: the Diva has left the building; long live The Divine.
Bette Midler will be one of the headliners set to replace Celine Dion after her show at Caesars Palace ends this December. Midler’s shows will start in February of 2008 and will happen in four week stints throughout the year, totally up to around 100 shows.
Elton John will continue to perform at the Colosseum as well and there are still unconfirmed rumors that Cher may become the third spoke in this particular wheel.
Don’t bother – I’ve already made all the jokes.
The Divine Miss M’s show will run about 90 minutes with ticket prices ranging from $95 to $250. They are already on sale for next February and most of the really good seats for the first set of dates are already gone. Trust me, I looked. And yes, I already bought tickets but not, disappointingly, to opening night. I’m going the second night and will make it my mission to make friends with everyone at Caesars Palace between now and then to score tickets to the big first show.
Caesars Palace is the best hotel and casino in the entire galaxy.
If you’ve never seen Bette Midler in concert you really don’t know what you’ve been missing. Her shows are a tour de force of non-stop singing, dancing, and laugh-out-loud humor, often of the very bawdy variety. I’ve been lucky enough to see her about a dozen times over the years including her big millennium concert in Vegas just before the clock ran out on 1999.
The Caesars show will reportedly run about 90 minutes with a lot of the usual suspects in songs but the surrounding material will be all new. Even if that 90 minutes is shorter than what she usually does that’s more for Vegas audiences than for herself. I saw her just about a year ago and the woman, who will turn 62 before the Vegas begin, has more energy than I do and I’m twenty years younger.
Midler has signed a two-year deal with Caesars Palace and has an option for extending it beyond that.
It’ll also be interesting to see if there might be any surprise visits from her former band mate and frequent collaborator Barry Manilow who plays regularly at the Las Vegas Hilton just about a mile away.
Midler is a multiple Grammy winner who has had a string of hits since the early 1970s including “The Rose,” “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and “From a Distance” to name a couple of well-known titles. She has also head a successful film career with Oscar nominated turns in “The Rose” and “For the Boys” plus roles in huge hits like “Beaches,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” and “The First Wives Club.”
Just for fun, I have posted my review of her 2004 “Kiss My Brass” tour on the Bette Midler page in the shows section on Vegas4Visitors.com.
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