By Marilyn Lester***Before April 3, 2008, Brazilian-born baritone Paulo Szot was conquering opera stages around the world. But he was cast that year to play Emile de Becque in the first-ever revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, a role, that he says, “changed my life.” Winning Best Actor Tony, Drama Desk, Theatre World and Outer Critics Circle awards for his performance, Szot became a crossover artist and star in opera 
and musical theater. This latest residency at 54 Below, This Enchanted Evening, was exactly that. With a set of classic baritone roles from The Great White Way, Szot proved again that he’s a rarity in his ability to master both operatic and popular genres effortlessly.
It was only dramatically appropriate that Szot make a “surprise” entrance from the bar of the club, while a “distracted audience” was focused on the mini-orchestra onstage. “Hello,” he said quietly, before launching into a robust “Some Enchanted Evening,” circulating through the audience on his way to the stage. Of course there was more to follow from South Pacific, in a medley somewhat intertwined with songs from Kismet. Szot was particularly resonant with “And This Is My Beloved.” And then the song that changed his life: “This Nearly Was Mine,” placed as the penultimate number of the set certified his sublime artistry: superb vocal tone, technical purity, remarkable phrasing and interpretive excellence.
It’s easy to declare Szot a performing god with star quality, and that assertion is all the more meaningful when it’s clear he’s no divo. Szot is a casual, natural, easy host with a warm and embracing personality and absolutely down to earth. The performance is about singing, largely uncluttered by narrative, and when he does speak it’s economical: setting up a song with some context and an occasional personal slant, as when he explains as a Brazilian youngster he 
wasn’t particularly good at soccer, a disappointing turn of events but fateful: his mother enrolled him in classes to learn music and dance.
Szot not only handles his crossover artistry with excellence, but in the Broadway/pop realm is able to excercise the vocal control necessary for ballads. His renditions of “Song on the Sand” (Jerry Herman) and “Who Can I Turn To” (Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley), were handled with a softened delivery. And departing from the “Golden Age” repertoire, his soulful rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” was a treat. For “most operatic,” a powerful and emotive “Stars” (Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil) from Les Miserables was stirring and sublime. The encore sealed the deal: with an introduction in French, Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot beauty, “If Ever I Would Leave You” was a whole lot more than “the good one” that Szot had promised was coming.
This Enchanted Evening was made more so by Szot’s musical support. At the piano and music-directing was the maestro and conductor of the American Pops Orchestra, Luke Frazier. His arrangements, in concert with several orchestrators, were richly effective both in and of themselves, and in how they enhanced Szot’s delivery of the repertoire. Strings added dimension and the front line of superb violinists Dilyana Tsenov, Ina Paris and Laura Sacks, with cellist Maria Jeffers, was appropriately dreamy. Robert Morris (guitar), Greg Watkins (bass) and Steven Picataggio (drums) offered muscular yet subtle rhythm to each number.
