Bryn Terfel at the Aotea Centre

By WILLIAM DART

Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel didn't need gimmicks like rugby accessories on his second visit. He simply walked on to the Aotea stage last night and delivered two hours of the sort of entertainment that, to most punters, would have more than justified the ticket price.

It's rare for us to hear a singer of such stature while still in his prime and, apart from a few memory lapses here and there, he was the consummate artist.

What a pity that the most substantial offering of the evening, Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel, was almost sabotaged by Terfel's patter and audience applause between songs.

But his beautifully gauged interpretation drew unexpected connections between this and the more emotionally charged Lieder of Gustav Mahler, rapturously so in songs like Youth and Love and In Dreams, which were immeasurably heightened by Anders Kilstrom's sympathetic piano.

The baritone gave us diction to die for and brought a sense of theatre to much of his material.

Britten folk-song arrangements came across like Broadway show numbers and the swing he gave Quilter's O Mistress Mine would have had Johnny Dankworth clicking his fingers.

Only occasionally were songs deluged in terms of the vocal power poured into them - Ivor Gurney's delicate Sleep and Copland's artless arrangement of At the River could well have been a few degrees cooler.

How nice to have pianist Kilstrom introduce a superb bracket of Tosti songs, pointing out the parallels between the Italian composer's Chanson de l'Adieu and Chopin's E minor Prelude.

He played a few bars of the Chopin; I'm sure that the audience would have welcomed the whole piece.

There were three encores, including a Victorian parlour song about a Big Brown Bear that sanctioned all kinds of roars and ululations (rather droll) and a Flanders and Swann number that lumbered along verse by verse through the various trades, until Monday brought the gasman round again (rather dull).

The best encore had Terfel singing Don Giovanni's Serenade to three lucky women in the front rows.

This was magic, and a taste of why Terfel tops the bill in the opera houses of the world.