A song can’t just be sung. It is no mere emission of notes. It must be divined, seized, cradled, proffered.

In Bernadette Peters’ case, that conjuring process has infinite guises. She can handle a lyric so delicately as to reveal it as perilously fragile; one sudden move by anyone at Davies Symphony Hall, where she appeared with the San Francisco Symphony for one night only on Saturday, July 30, and the whole number might shatter.

She can wrestle a song to the ground or make it erupt above her head in a cloud of smoke. A word, a syllable becomes a painter’s canvas. Did you ever think about how silly and cute the “toot” sound in “substitute” is? Or how, if you make “good” into a bisyllabic “goo-duh,” you might make the “uh” trail off erotically, like you’re checking out the word’s backside after it walks by?

Those last two felicitous moments came in “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” from “South Pacific,” one of many lively choices in a wide-ranging set list, much of which came from the two-time Tony winner’s decades-long career on Broadway. Others, like this one, were fun twists on favorites. In Peters’ rendering, the very prospect of a dame is enough to loosen the limbs and plump the lips.

彼得斯穿着一件闪闪发光的香槟色礼服，作为乐器的一部分招募了她周围的一切：她缠扰舞台的方式，她将标志性的弹性红色卷发从脸上卷起，就像她将自己的麦克风赶走一样休息一下，就像她爬上一个短楼梯的方式，暗示着在大钢琴顶上表演“发烧”。

然而，对于我们这些人习惯于与四人乐队的百老汇演出的人，他们通常是合成器，当晚的真正乐器礼物是约瑟夫·塔尔肯（Joseph Thalken）的音乐指导下的交响曲。啊，我们回想起，好像从一个糟糕的梦中觉醒，这就是音乐剧院应该听起来像是这样的 - 包裹着丰富性，刺痛的共鸣。就像从室内植物到森林一样。

彼得斯被普遍认为是斯蒂芬·桑德海姆（Stephen Sondheim）作品的主要口译员之一，他去年去世，她的歌曲《愚蠢》（Follies），《小夜音乐》和《陪伴》（Company）和“公司”的演绎很容易成为音乐会的亮点。她挖掘了从喉咙咆哮到蓬松的耳语，大多数在家里都在登记册中，以某种方式既有娃娃般的纯真，又有体验的重量和果壳。

She made “Send in the Clowns,” one of the wryest ballads ever written, a song of defiance, finding in-the-moment discoveries in timeworn lyrics. With “Being Alive,” she somehow suggested in the two little title words the full range of the human experience. And “Losing My Mind” seemed to emanate directly out of a physical ache deep in the guts.

There’s this thing megastars can do that no one else can: They hoist their arms, either during a number or as part of taking a bow, and they carry the whole world, Atlas-style. It’s a capacity they’ve developed through years of absorbing our needs and wants, but it also derives from some inherent generosity that makes them stars in the first place. Pin all your hopes on me, Peters seems to say in these moments. She can take them; it’s OK.

That same power manifested in a different way when she merely introduced the numbers she sang from “Hello, Dolly!” Unspooling Dolly Levi’s story, Peters shifted almost imperceptibly from the third person to the first. Sans costume or set or artfully constructed world around her, she devised one through just the insistence of her imagination. Suddenly, the plight of this widowed matchmaker became the most important thing in the world, and the song hadn’t even begun yet.