Having a good time singing is what attracts people to the Torrance Civic Chorale.

When Torrance performing arts supervisor Joe D’Alesio was given the city’s amateur chorus to oversee 19 years ago, it came with a bonus.

“I started singing with the group,” said D’Alesio, who hadn’t performed since grade school.

Today, D’Alesio is still a regular, and finds singing with the chorus under the direction of Mary Beth Bennett “something I enjoy doing.”

Having a good time singing is what attracts people to the 60-member Torrance Civic Chorale, whose repertoire runs from popular songs to Latin Masses. Tonight and Saturday, the mood will be show business as the chorus sings its spring concert in the West High School Pavilion.

Major numbers will be medleys from “Porgy and Bess” and “Les Miserables.” The grand finale is a collection of songs from stage musicals called, “Everything’s Coming Up Broadway.”

There also will be a women’s ensemble singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” and “I Remember it Well,” the nostalgic reminiscences of an elderly couple from “Gigi,” as well as music from “Annie” and “Flower Drum Song.”

The chorale, which anyone may join for an annual fee of $40, is in its 26th year as a Parks and Recreation Department activity. The chorale sings three major concerts a year and also gives a short performance--while dressed in red, white and blue--at the city’s Fourth of July celebration at Wilson Park. The group also has appeared with the Torrance and El Camino College symphony orchestras.

Bennett, a professional musician who has directed the chorale for two years, says the group is a mixture of people with trained voices and others who took up singing on their own. Some also sing in other choruses. “We have a good time, but they work very hard, and they want to work hard,” said Bennett, who rehearses the singers for two hours every week. “The quality ends up being quite good.”

Said Dick Bonham, a singer with the group for 14 years: “We sing for the pure joy of it. Fortunately, we’ve had good, patient directors that take our voices and get a pretty darned good blend.”

Singers say a core of 20 or so performers has stayed faithful for many years, while others have come and gone. People have formed friendships; some people have met and married, and, in some cases, have later gotten divorced. There are parties, a spring dinner-dance and caroling at Christmas.

Bonham says it’s “a very warm, caring, friendly group, like a big family.”

Barbara Materi, who joined the group 24 years ago after hearing one of its concerts, said “my love of singing and the different shows we do” has kept her faithful to the chorus. She said she prefers the popular songs, but calls the classical pieces “a real challenge.”

Even though the singers are amateurs, the chorale’s traveling schedule might rival some professional ensembles.

They have toured Europe and Asia, once performing in Torrance’s sister city of Kashiwa, Japan. This summer, 20 singers will perform in Germany and Austria. People pay their own way--the summer tour will cost about $2,800 each--and family members often go along.

D’Alesio calls the tours singing vacations.

“We claim we’re not a choral group that tours but a touring group that sings. . . . We try not to take ourselves too seriously,” he said.

Bennett said she likes to achieve a blend of classical and popular works with the chorus, as well as to challenge them. For the upcoming European trip, the chorale will reprise the “Porgy and Bess” and “Les Miserables” medleys, as well as sing a Mass by Norman Dello Joio and Mozart’s “Te Deum.”

Bennett calls her singers “an unusually nice group of people. I can work them hard, but I tell my jokes, and they make fun of me, and I make fun of them. We have fun.”