The boys have got a great little act, no doubt about it. Great idea, great little act, I love it. And they sure can sing, especially the one with glasses if he's the one I think he is. And the little one: sweet. And the other one, he's good too. And it just kills me when he sings My Way, ''What is a man?'' and all that. No, they're just fine, all three and it's a great idea. Great.
And it is, and they can sing. But given all this, it isn't quite as good as it ought to be. Perhaps it was a mistake not to keep 'O sole mio for last. Certainly we want something corresponding to the medleys which did so well for the three unmentionables in another place. Instead they give us ''Una furtiva lagrima'' in strict triple time, the cadenza divided one-two-three with a tutti le tre to finish; and it doesn't quite bring the house down. Carmen's Habanera, teasing and lush, is genuinely well sung. This is by Andreas Scholl who also sings a composition of his own, White as Lilies, an attractive bit of gently swung baroque with ground bass. Dominique Visse brings a wicked touch to ''Pleurez, mes yeux'' (of all things), and to the Perichole's champagne song, shorne of laughs but delivered with an elfin glee worthy of Harpo. There seems not a great deal of point to Pascal Bertin's more or less straight performance of the Massenet, though the writer of the insert notes (''Isidorio Walls-Cornetto translated by Simon Catto-Wall'') makes more of the opportunities by representing ''Reponds a ma tendresse'' as an excerpt from La voix humaine. In fact the written notes (''thus the counter-tenor was born and in the place of the hysterical rodomontades of the obsolete tenor the singing of angels soared up'') set the tone for the kind of spoof which the recital itself promises but only partly delivers. Thirty-five minutes is not very long. A little ensemble work might have helped (Rhine Maidens or the trio from Der Rosenkavalier). Still, it was a good idea, almost a great one, and it succeeds up to a point, even if that point is rather quickly reached. R1 '9508127'