When you get 20 minutes to talk with Denver-bound legend Bernadette Peters, there are an impossible number of topics to cover. The 16 Broadway shows. The three Tony Awards. Singing “Broadway Baby” to Johnny Carson. Playing the evil stepmother in the Whitney Houston “Cinderella.” Steve Martin licking her face in “The Jerk.” Getting exorcised by an exterminator (Tim Conway!) on “The Carol Burnett Show.” That perfect hair. Carol Burnett just now on “Better Call Saul.” Where do you even start?

With dogs, of course.

Peters is a passionate animal advocate who is responsible for the placement of thousands of dogs and cats through “Broadway Barks,” the non-profit she started with Mary Tyler Moore and turns 25 next July. For one barktastic afternoon each summer, between the matinee and evening Broadway performances, Peters invites 20 New York City animal shelters and adoption agencies to bring hundreds of adorable, adoptable dogs and cats to Shubert Alley – joined by every celebrity she’s ever met – to encourage the thousands who gather to give a pet a forever home.

“I love animals so much, as did my dear friend Mary,” said Peters. “Pets showed their value and their meaning in the world during the pandemic, when everyone needed a companion so badly. When they are rescued, they come with their memory. They are just so grateful, and they give back so much. Having a pet is just so uplifting.”

Peters, perhaps best known for the musicals “Hello, Dolly!,” “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Into the Woods,” promises her concert with the Colorado Symphony on Saturday (Nov. 12) will be uplifting as well. She will perform Broadway hits by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman, among others, in her first Colorado concert since appearing in Aspen in 2009.

“I’m excited about coming to Denver,” she said. “I know I’m there to entertain, but entertaining can be in a beautiful way, it can be in a funny way, in a dramatic way. I’ll be taking you on an arc, a journey, a musical experience. And hopefully the audience will feel satisfied by the end of it.”

Peters has been performing solo concerts around the world for decades, but singing with an orchestra affords special musical opportunities, and her set list will reflect that.

“I will be singing ‘Johanna’ (from ‘Sweeney Todd’) specifically because I am appearing with the symphony in Denver,” she said. “I love it when I get to sing to these beautiful orchestrations with such great musicians.” (She also promised Peggy Lee’s “Fever” and two “very fun songs” from “Hello, Dolly!”)

While Peters is seemingly unstoppable at 74, she has had to cope with great losses of late, most recently the deaths of Sondheim and Angela Lansbury. Hard to believe, but Nov. 26 will mark one year since Sondheim’s death.

Peters was widely regarded as Sondheim’s muse. Peter Marks of The Washington Post called Peters’ voice and Sondheim’s brain “a love affair that raged on for 35 years.” She appeared in five of his Broadway musicals – “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” ”Gypsy,” “Into the Woods” and “Sunday in the Park with George” – and in a 1995 concert performance of “Anyone Can Whistle” alongside Lansbury at Carnegie Hall. Peters sang “Children Will Listen” as a tribute to Sondheim at the Tony Awards last June.

“It’s sad for me because I do miss him,” she said. “I miss talking to him. It’s such a great loss because he’s not right here. But he left us the greatest gift: His songs.”

And she’s still unable to speak of him in the past tense.

Sondheim is Sondheim, she said, “because he writes about important things in life. Important emotions.” And, like a good novel, she said, his songs are rooted in character.

“Steve really gives you the road map of what’s going on in any given song,” she said, “and everything you need to know is in that road map. Certainly that starts with the lyrics but there is meaning in everything, down to whether something is a whole note or a quarter note.”

Sondheim’s brilliance is also further expressed in the variety of his scores. ”Each show has a completely different style of music,” she said, citing his musical nod to Georges Seurat’s pointillism in “Sunday in the Park with George.” The waltzes in “A Little Night Music.” The period pieces in “Follies.” Each show he wrote, she said, “he was like an actor taking on a different role.”

He’s not only written Peters a songbook to her life, she said, but “to everyone’s life.”

Whenever she needs to check in with her friend, she turns to that songbook. “I like hearing ‘No One is Alone’ to remind me,” she said. “I like hearing ‘Children will Listen’ and ‘With So Little to Be Sure Of’ ” (from “Anyone Can Whistle”).

Peters also feels the loss of Lansbury as a friend and mentor. “She was a great actor, first and foremost,” Peters said. “Just go on YouTube and look at her original ‘Rose’s Turn.’ But I also got to see her (as the comic spiritualist Madame Arcati) in a London production of ‘Blithe Spirit,’ and God, she was so inventive and creative. She was just a lovely person, and you can feel the loss to the community.”

Peters and Lansbury will be forever linked for their iconic portrayals of the quintessentially driven stage mother in “Gypsy.” So I asked Peters about a groundbreaking production of “Gypsy” held earlier this year at Vintage Theatre in Aurora. There, Denver’s Mary Louise Lee became just the second Black actor to play Rose in a professional production of “Gypsy.” Peters thought that was just wonderful.

“I think that kind of casting absolutely can work,” she said. “It’s the story of a woman struggling to make a living and trying to help her children get ahead. That can be any woman. It totally makes sense to me.”

For all of Peters’ accomplishments in the theater, she’s reached global popularity as a triple threat in television and films. Her 2021 appearance on the TV musical drama “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” earned Peters her first prime-time Emmy nomination in 20 years playing a pal to Mary Steenburgen‘s character. On that episode, Bernadette performed a cover of Sia‘s “Cheap Thrills” and Gwen Stefani‘s “Rich Girl.” Her director and choreographer was Colorado native Mandy Moore, a graduate of Summit High School in Breckenridge.

“Mandy was great directing Mary and myself,” Peters said. “She really knew her stuff. I just had a great experience working on that show.”

Peters shares a theatrical bloodline with another Colorado native, Tony-winning actor Annaleigh Ashford, who followed in Peters’ footsteps in an acclaimed revival of “Sunday in the Park with George.” Ashford will be starring in another Sondheim revival next spring as the human pie-making Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd,” and Peters couldn’t be happier for her. “Are you kidding?” she said. “Annaleigh is so great. I love, love, love her. And she’s going to be a wonderful Mrs. Lovett.”

As unfathomable as this will sound, it has now been 63 years since Peters first set foot on a Broadway stage. And yet – it is absolutely fathomable that we might see her on Broadway again.

“You might,” she said. “I think so. … I think so.”

What that role might be, however, is anyone’s guess. At this point in her career, she said, “I don’t really have a bucket-list role. I am so fortunate. I have played most of the leading ladies in the Broadway musicals that I want to play. I don’t know if there are any left, really.”

Well, maybe it’s being written right now. “Yeah, maybe something new,” she said. “We’ll see!”