Alfie Boe with Adele O’Neill, the Llanelli Choral Society, Hywel Girls Choir and Hywel Boy Singers at Tabernacle Chapel, Llanelli.
Alfie Boe came, saw and conquered when he ventured into Llanelli, one of the heartlands of the Welsh choral tradition. There was something of the rock star about Boe’s appearance – cruising up to the chapel vestry at Tabernacle in a shiny blue Bentley limousine and taking the ‘stage’ in T-shirt and cloth waistcoat.
Well, it wasn’t so much of a stage – it was a case of “the first time I’ve sung in a pulpit” for the Lancashire singer who is the current holder of the unofficial Britain’s Most Popular Tenor title.
A pulpit may not be the best canvas to display years of stagecraft (even if Boe did attempt a tap dance at one stage!), but this concert wasn’t about showmanship; it was all about the voice. And, boy, what a voice. There was a Neapolitan air to Boe’s first-half appearance with Tosti’s A Vuccella and Marchiare and Parlami d’Amore by Bixio and Ghitarrra Romano by Lazzaro.
After the interval, Boe pulled out the guaranteed crowd-pleasers – Some Enchanted Evening, On The Street Where You Live, If I Loved You, Hushabye Mountain and a wonderful duet with soprano Adele O’Neill of Tonight from West Side Story. Inevitably, the show finished with excerpts from Les Miserables.
In Llanelli, Boe is known as the second most famous man to have played Jean Valjean: the first being Burry Port’s John Owen Jones, of course. Boe’s version of Bring Him Home was wonderfully expressive. But better than the John Owen Jones treatment? It’s a close run thing. On the choral side of the evening, it was no contest: The youngsters representing the Hywel Girls Choir and the Hywel Boys Singers comfortably put their older colleagues in the Llanelli Choral Society in the shade. But on a night of many voices, one soared above them all to the heights of the ‘Emmanuel’ on the ceiling of Tabernacle Chapel – that of one Alfie Boe.
