Live music review: Tony Bennett

Bord Gais Energy Theatre

At 88, Tony Bennett is the last of the great crooners and, watching him in action, you almost wish the Beatles, Rolling Stone et al had never come along and hastened his genre’s artistic decline. An era when popular music meant dapper emoters such as Bennett singing their hearts out was surely a golden time indeed.

While the march of the decades has left him shakier, his voice has barely aged at all. Stopping off in Dublin en route to Israel for a concert with Lady Gaga (they are about to release a collection of duets), he was charming and masterful, his extraordinary vocals segueing from melancholy to triumph. Sadness and joy never felt so palpable; Bennett packed a lifetime of feeling into each extravagant quaver.