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Michael Amante
August 26, 2009
“In the Name of Love”
Feinstein’s at Loews Regency – August 24, 25
Michael Amante knows what his audience wants—volume with a capital “V”—and he gives it to them. They like their love songs loud, and at the first of his two-night Feinstein’s at Loews Regency stay, he made certain they got them that way. They also like a few Italian staples like “Mala Femmena” (Renato Carosone) and “Innamorata” (Harry Warren) thrown in (what, no “Al Di La”?). He happily complies. They even go for a little opera fare, and he offers them “Nessun Dorma” (Giacomo Puccini-Giuseppe Adami-Renato Simoni) with its opportunities not only to be loud on the concluding “vincero”s but to be booming.
Amante—a personable fellow whose very name conjures notions of love and lovers—also knows what his audience doesn’t set great store by. He knows they’re not going to take umbrage at off-pitch singing, something he does plenty of. He’s evidently confident that singing a warhorse aria nasally into a mic isn’t going to offend their sensibilities. He knows they’re not necessarily a show-tune crowd and won’t mind if he has to ask musical director-accompanist Ron Abel whether Stephen Sondheim’s “Someone is Waiting” is from Company. Try that with the tuner-wise crowd that more typically fills this soigné environ and expect derisive hoots and hollers.
But what care Amante? He’s someone who has sung for Pope John-Paul II, as it’s announced when he’s introduced, and that serves as sufficient beatification. The implied papal endorsement suggests something else about Amante and certain singers like him. Criticism from mere reviewers is likely no use to him or them. The standards that most, if not all, cabaret critics would apply are almost at odds with what his audience craves and what he supplies. For him, it’s enough that he gives those assembled to cheer him on—including, on his opening night, the president of his fan club—the big notes at the ends of songs.
He’ll give out with those clangers even if they’re at odds with the emotions being expressed in the lyrics. For example, at the end of his kick-off number, “The Way You Look Tonight” (Dorothy Fields-Jerome Kern), he reached the phrase “‘Cause I love you” and screamed the word “love.” That’s not exactly in synch with the sentiment expressed, wouldn’t you say? The more that Amante—who names Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Vale, Al Martino, Luciano Pavarotti and Jussi Bjorling as influences—sang, the more he gave the impression that exploring lyrics for their emotional truth is a concept that rarely crosses his mind.
Maybe because when it did in his one more or less consistently muted inclusion, the poignant “I Could Have Told You So” (Carl Sigman-James Van Heusen), the audience response was tepid, polite. Nor was there much reaction to “Gigi” (Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe) or David Gates’s touching “If,” through which Amante remained essentially emotionless.
More than anything, Amante’s fans—many jumping to their feet more than once when those final notes clawed the boite’s back walls—wanted it big. And big (but not better) was what they got.
