<i>Performance:</i> Ten out of ten for tenacious tenors

11 Feb, 2001 06:59 AM2 mins to read

The Ten Tenors

Concert Chamber, Friday

Review: Heath Lees

An audience of only about 10 times 10 greeted the Ten Tenors.

Aucklanders rarely go to summer concerts unless they're outdoors and free.

But Ten Tenors can be tenacious and, to their great credit, they managed to make every one of the audience feel as though they'd been to a huge party.

Forget opera. Any suggestion that the Ten Tenors might be like the opera world's Three Tenors dies on impact. There was only one operatic segment, kept back until the second half, badly sung (the nasal sound system didn't help) and embarrassingly sentimental.

Poor Rodolfo's marvellously faltering admission of love from Act One of La Boheme was pumped up relentlessly to the power of 10, and the top-note stuff was just a shout.

But the group offers entertainment rather than art, and as entertainment it scores heavily.

The songs are all skilfully choreographed, usually finishing with a quick pose and a blackout. All the facial gestures are as funny as they are versatile. And driving the whole thing from behind are two incredibly good keyboard players.

Most impressive are the arrangements revolving round a theme, and the best of these was the Australian bracket. Sending themselves up with every note, they roared through horrors like Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport and A Pub With No Beer, then suddenly they were serious for a loving arrangement of Waltzing Matilda that transformed its swagman-nonsense into a national hymn.

Two other fabulous show-stoppers must be mentioned. Freddie Mercury's Bohemian Rhapsody received a treatment that perfectly captured its nightmare as well as its comic side, and the spoof of the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive was side-splittingly funny.

Not perhaps the most musical event we've had in Auckland but 10 times better than expected.

Admission to the Auckland Philharmonia Guild Deloitte Summer Concert on Wednesday was incorrectly advertised in the Weekend Herald as being free. Admission is by prepaid ticket only.