REVIEW: José Carreras takes it easy in a program of Italian, Neapolitan and Spanish songs.

• When: Saturday night
• Where: Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts

That hoary visitor from another planet might have been puzzled by all the fuss. But then this was the world of the Three Tenors, where the gravitational pull of audience response is all out of proportion to what is taking place onstage.

More specifically, it was the Third Tenor, José Carreras, still slim and handsome, who performed in recital Saturday night at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the opening of the venue's classical music season. His fans came out in large numbers and he could do no wrong.

Not that, objectively speaking, he actually did much wrong. The tenor, 51, had chosen a curious program, one that carefully skirted technical challenges as well as musical profundities. In stylistic terms, he traveled about half an inch all evening long. Carreras simply came out and did the same thing over and over again.

His agenda remained remarkably middle brow. Art songs? Forget it. Most of these offerings were barely above parlor songs. Brief pieces by mainly minor composers were the rule of thumb. The short first half consisted of songs by Mercadante, Bellini, anonymous, Costa, D'Anzi and Tosti, not exactly pantheonic names. Each one struck a certain note of bittersweetness or sweet sentimentality and then moved along to a wow finish.

Mirroring the first, the second half offered Ginastera, Guastavino and Tata Nacho, a French set by Leoncavallo and two songs by Puccini ("Terra e mare" and "Mentia l'avviso"). The encores? Gastaldon and Tosti, the old Mario Lanza favorite "With a Song in My Heart" and "Granada."

Admittedly, Carreras had a way with these pieces. Gussying them up with tenorissimo mannerisms — the emotive catch, the pulsating throb, the sudden hike, the taffy-pull pianissimo — almost made them sound like great music.

His voice, despite a cough, appeared in decent, if not flawless, order. The occasional hollowness and less-than-smooth legato really were occasional, a pliant, focused, clear and forceful vocal attainment the rule.

Still, he was barely taxed and ditto his tasteful pianist, Lorenzo Bavaj. The whole thing had a been-there-done-that quality.

Copyright © 1999 The Orange County Register.