Tenors, it seems, are like the Marx Brothers — two is too few and four, all apologies to Zeppo, are too many.
The original coining of the Three Tenors became an opera/pop phenomenon, and spurred various operatic incarnations (Three Irish Tenors, for one). One of the latest is the Three Tenors from the Holy Land, who will play Palo Alto and San Francisco this weekend in shows sponsored by the Israeli Consulate.
And while Yevgeni Shapovalov, Vladislav Goray and Felix Livshitz make no pretensions to be Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti, Shapovalov notes that only his trio kills — kills! — with its version of “Hatikvah.”
“We sing in Hebrew, Israeli songs. And we sing Yiddish songs, Russian songs, Spanish, English, everything. We sing ‘Be My Love,’ you know, Mario Lanza did it,” said Shapovalov, the only member of the trio who can speak as well as sing in English.
“The Pavarotti of Israel” crooned a few bars over the telephone for the benefit of those not up to date on Lanza’s discography.
A touring trio of Soviet-born tenors was Shapovalov’s idea; the native Belarusian joined up with Goray and Livshitz, both Ukranian-born, for a series of more than 100 sold-out shows in the past two years in Israel and the former Soviet Union. Now they’re in the midst of a foray across North America, drawing heavily in cities with large Russian and Israeli populations.
The trio can easily cobble together enough English, Russian and Hebrew to cajole the audience into singing along with “Santa Lucia,” another operatic classic familiar to buffs and Bugs Bunny watchers alike.
“Everybody sings ‘Santa Lucia’ with the three tenors. We do this competition,” explains Shapovalov.
“Every town in every country where we perform the show, we get everyone to sing along with us.”
The singer singles out Miami as being a particularly adept singing audience, “like a big philharmonic chorus.”
For the Palo Alto and San Francisco shows, he hints that the trio is preparing a special Russian surprise number.
But that’s all he’ll say. And the other two tenors aren’t saying anything either.
Three Tenors from the Holy Land will perform 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15 at the Palo Alto JCC, 4000 Middlefield Rd. Tickets range from $30 to $40. The tenors will sing 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16 at Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., S.F. Tickets: $25-$40. Information: www.embassyofisrael.org/sanfran/mail/3tenors