These stars sparkle in Hatch Shell fete
Painted stars were stretched around the base of the Hatch Shell last night. But the stars that mattered were on the stage -- David Lee Roth, Jennifer Holliday, PopSearch 2004 winner Tracy Silva, and, shining brightest of all, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and conductor Keith Lockhart.
Roth, a quarter-century away from his first album with Van Halen, held the greatest curiosity value. He's been in the news lately as an EMT trainee and a poker-playing "guest" of Tony Soprano. How would the bad boy do, back doing what made him famous, but in the different context of the Boston Pops? It turns out Roth knows the Pops because he spent seven childhood years here and has attended concerts on the Esplanade.
He had only two numbers, "California Girls" in the first, locally-televised part, and "Jump" in the national CBS segment, but he had the 450,000-plus crowd on its feet dancing. He wore black pinstripe pants and vest, and glitter shoes he might have bought at Liberace's estate sale. His voice was rough and ready, his energy high, and if he doesn't jump and spin as high as he once did, neither does Mikhail Baryshniknov. Roth is a showman, and he put on a show, even duetting briefly with Lockhart.
Believe it or not, at the end of "Jump," he grabbed a baton and twirled -- somebody has to on the Fourth of July. You could see the Pops playing, but there was no way to hear it over the pumped-amplification of Roth's band.
More than two decades after opening in Boston in "Dreamgirls," Holliday looks far more like a supermodel than she did then -- despite the spangly bathrobe she chose for her first appearance. Her pipes are still pretty spectacular, even though "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" doesn't really suit her style -- she seemed short of breath and mangled the phrasing. She returned at the end in a more flattering dress and sang the daylights out of "This Is the Moment," although some of the close-ups on the jumbo screen made her look like the star of "Jaws."
Silva has star potential. She looked coolly elegant in a silver silk gown she had borrowed early in the PopSearch contest that landed her on stage; she said she had promised herself not to wear it unless she won. She chose to sing something different for the concert, "Your Daddy's Son" from "Ragtime," a courageous choice because much of it is quiet and intimate. Her soprano register sounded sweet and tender, and in the middle, she hauled off to hit some of those soaring high notes she delivers straight from the heart. The audience gave her a standing O.
The rest of the program was all-American with one exception. That was what a television host called the Pops' "signature song," Tchaikovsky's "1812" Overture, with the boom, smoke, and flame of cannons and a preliminary burst of fireworks, green, gold, and crimson.
