Review: Katherine Jenkins - Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow

“GLASGOW, you need to make me laugh,” bemoaned Welsh pop opera singer Katherine Jenkins, and all the older ladies in the audience who wished she was their granddaughter and they could just give her a big cuddle murmured in sympathy.

The recent break-up of her engagement to sometime Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones couldn’t have been any more public, what with both parties tweeting about it, and knowledge of the sad event coloured every lyric here.

Objectively, this at least added a little bite to a show which was constructed to be as saccharine as required to appeal to audience members aged between 10 and 90, as we discovered during a charming Q&A session after the break, a procession of fond anniversary and birthday requests and over-optimistic dating proposals. As a light entertainer Jenkins is admittedly perfectly pitched, her French version of I Dreamed a Dream (J’avais rêvé d’une autre vie) and a rich take on folk standard Black is the Colour (of My True Love’s Hair) both elegantly voiced and tinged with sadness.

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A duet on West Side Story’s Tonight with suave guest performer Nathan Pacheco and solo showcases for Pacheco himself – singing Nessun Dorma – and the accompanying National Symphony Orchestra offered a lighter mood. Yet it seemed like an occasion for polished, Blitz-spirited, sequin-gowned melancholy to prevail, and the double finale of I Could Have Danced All Night and Time to Say Goodbye (trailed by the words “singing for you is the happiest I’ve been in a long time”) certainly provided that. Emphatically designed not even to displease with an unexpected cover here or there, Jenkins’ show was a masterclass in deft mass-market appeal.

RATING: ***

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