"They said we could never be happy / They laughed at us and how," he crooned playfully on "They All Laughed," as drummer Harold Jones drove the superb four-piece band behind him. "But ho, ho, ho / Who's got the last laugh now?"
Tony Bennett does. The saloon singer born Anthony Benedetto, who scored his first No. 1 hit in 1952 with Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart" - he did do that one - has now outlived Frank Sinatra, his fellow custodian of the awesome body of work created by timeless pre-rock-and-roll songwriters such as Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, George and Ira Gershwin, and Jimmy Van Heusen, by more than a decade.
Bennett never had Sinatra's swagger, his sexualized savoir faire, but he's always been an artisan of the highest order who approaches every song he sings with thoughtfulness and commitment, and emanates grace and kindness on stage.
More astoundingly, his voice is still robust and his sense of rhythm unerring, halfway through his ninth decade. He demonstrated that with quite the showstopping parlor trick in the four-balconied, 154-year-old opera house, which he had earlier called "my favorite concert hall in the world."
Asking the soundman to cut off all amplification, he sang "Fly Me to the Moon" without a microphone, filling up the room with just the sound of ace guitarist Gray Sargent's instrument, and his own slightly grainy voice. As a physical feat by an elderly gentleman, it was at least as impressive as the didn't-see-that-coming Temptations-like spin he did while dancing with his daughter Antonia on a duet of Stephen Sondheim's "Old Friends."
