Gloria Estefan has 15 years and a lot of life experience under her belt since the last time she did an atypical stint in a Las Vegas venue.

The last one was in June of 1988, the singer was 30, and her 12-night stand in the old "Elvis showroom" of the Las Vegas Hilton was basically an accident.

In that era, a reigning pop star with a No. 1 hit could suffer an image blow by playing the Strip. Truth be told, the Hilton locked in the gig long before "Anything for You" and three other singles from the "Let It Loose" album muscled into the Top 10.

This weekend and next find Estefan working the Colosseum at Caesars Palace at age 46, with a personal, autobiographical new album and a far more calculated plan to debut it in a special setting before hitting the arenas next summer.

"It's the first time in over 15 years that I've played a venue of that size," Estefan told reporters earlier this year, when she came to town to announce and promote the concerts.

"We're going to use the size of the stage sometimes, but since we don't have the Cirque (du Soleil) element that Celine has, we (also) really reduce it and make it a lot more intimate," she added. "We wanted something that would really fit the mood of the album."

The album is "Unwrapped" and the shows (today through Sunday and Oct. 17-19) aim to use the Colosseum's unique combination of massive stage and midsized, 4,000-seat capacity to showcase the subtle charms of an album recorded live in the studio.

"The most unusual thing for me was that I sang from the control booth where I could see all of (the musicians)," she says of the "Unwrapped" sessions. "We put everybody on headphones. I wanted to keep those performances, warts and all, and go for the emotion rather than the technical perfection."

To preserve that spirit, the monstrous 120-foot stage designed for Celine Dion's "A New Day ..." will be filled with something rarely seen in the Canadian diva's show: musicians.

"A wall of sound" and "a jungle of percussion" are two of the terms that Kenny Ortega, the show's producer-director, uses to describe the 19 players who will "fill that stage from one side to another."

Ortega has worked with most of the great pop divas, including Cher. But he says the mission here is more organic than a series of music video-style production numbers. "For the greater part, it's about Gloria and the depth of this new sound."

The Caesars shows are the only live dates for the rest of the year, and most of them will be filmed in a multicamera video shoot for a DVD or TV special to coincide with next summer's touring.

Estefan recorded two rhythmic dance pop albums in the 1990s ("Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" and "Destiny"), but saved her more introspective moments for the Spanish-language "Mi Tierra" and "Alma Caribena."

The singer remembers longtime co-producer Sebastian Krys saying, "We still didn't have a seminal album in English that he thought would portray the artist and the writer that he knew."

She wrote all the lyrics herself after listening to basic tracks of melodies by Emilio Estefan, her husband and longtime musical collaborator, and a variety of co-writers. "I had the luxury of time to write the whole thing," she says. "I wanted the music to speak to me before I wrote lyrics."

A multicultural cast of guest players broadened her palette from the Cuban and bongo sounds that gave early hits such as "Conga" their distinctive jump.

Estefan particularly singles out Manu Katache, the French-African drummer who has toured with Sting and Peter Gabriel. "His African rhythms and the things he plays are just mind-blowing," she says. "I was watching him and he brought out something completely different in my singing."

Ortega has worked with Estefan since the 1985 "Conga" video, and is no stranger to Las Vegas; he's also staging the new "Sirens of TI" pirate battle at the renamed Treasure Island.

"I heard the music in Miami at their house before it was even mixed," he says. "It was inspiring and it moved me."

"What you will find with Gloria is that she continues to mature and grow," Ortega adds. "She doesn't fall asleep at the wheel and rely on the hits. ... I think she's ready for this. It just feels right."

Many of the new songs are directly autobiographical. "Your Picture" is about Emilio's parents. "You" was written for her daughter Emily. "Famous" asks, "Who in this world sees when I cry?" and takes note of those who "measure my worth then decide that I'm not what they need."

"It's very intimate, personal. There's a lot of my life in there," she says. "We wanted to create almost a musical picture book of my past life."

There's even a bonus DVD with a documentary by her grown son Nayib.

"Age gives you a very irreverent feeling about everything in general," she says. "It's such a personal album there are some things I would easily divulge at this age that I might not have felt comfortable sharing before.

"But this is my life; I feel really good," she adds. "Physically great and mentally great. It's just a great age for me."

The Colosseum run could set an innovative precedent for using the Strip as something more than just another tour stop. Estefan says she's hoping her fans will make these shows a destination visit, as they do for Dion and for Elton John, who is all but officially confirmed as next year's joint tenant.

But she's not interested in hanging around for 200 shows. "Let me tell you, my hat's off to Celine," she says. "I don't think I want to do anything for 200 days a year, no matter how pleasurable it is.

"The reason I tour is because I like variety. Every night is a different audience. This is a great venue, needless to say, a place to be where my world fans are, but (200 shows) would be a tough gig."

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