In macho contest, we have a winner

The spirited concert that brought together three Latino pop stars Wednesday -- for no apparent reason besides their shared hunkiness -- evoked “Quien Es Mas Macho?,” the silly game show from “Saturday Night Live.” Mock contestants had to consider the relative virility of randomly paired Latino celebrities and determine who was more macho.

Of course the test was nonsense because machismo is in the eye of the beholder. Judging by the evenly distributed adulation of the near-capacity crowd at Irvine’s 16,000-seat Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, this testosterone contest was a three-way tie among headliners Marc Anthony, Chayanne and Alejandro Fernandez.

But if the three singers are judged on the relative strength of their individual salsa, pop and mariachi performances, respectively, one clearly emerged a winner. When it came to vocal prowess and artistic passion, Marc Anthony was mucho, mucho mas macho.

The Nuyorican salsa star looked skinnier than ever, but his voice boomed across the open-air arena. It was hard to believe such big pipes could fit inside that bony chest, revealed beneath a shirt open almost to his navel.

The singer has never seemed more charged and, at the same time, more relaxed. Perhaps he was drawing inspiration from wife Jennifer Lopez, who was watching from the wings. If so, she’s made him a happy man. He was clearly enjoying himself, twirling and prancing across the stage, lingering over tender melodic passages, then coaxing his crack orchestra to rhythmic crescendos.

Anthony also dropped some of that superstar pretense that once passed for intensity. Even when he tried to strike some dramatic, romance-novel poses, a smile would crack his serious expression. Yet when he pounded and threw the mike stand onto the stage during a heartfelt torch song, the gesture of romantic desperation seemed genuine.

The singer closed his hourlong solo segment, the night’s middle set, with his 1999 crossover hit “I Need to Know.” But mostly he stuck to the great hits that made him a star in the mid-’90s, the last time salsa reached a mass Latino audience. (Buena Vista Social Club was primarily an Anglo affair.)

Perhaps that’s why he seemed so natural. With no more pressure to please mainstream Anglo audiences, Anthony could just be himself. The music, and his soul, seemed better for it.

He was followed by Mexican singer Fernandez, who appeared in full ranchero regalia with a backup of 11 mariachi musicians plus an 11-piece pop band. Fernandez’s voice sounded faint at first because of a faulty mike, causing a bad start for the son of mariachi legend Vicente Fernandez, whose unamplified voice can fill stadiums.

But Fernandez recovered and delivered a rousing singalong set of Mexican country standards mixed with his own career-making hits, also from the ‘90s. He may not have Daddy’s pipes, but he has confidence and charisma to spare.

It was amazing how easily the crowd shifted from revved-up salsa to traditional rancheras and contemporary pop, mouthing lyrics in every genre. Occasionally the roving cameras focused on the joyful faces of fans belting them out, their delight vividly projected on the amphitheater’s jumbo screens.

The festive audience participation was half the fun during a show that broke no new artistic ground. In the current fragmented state of Latin music, the concert reaffirmed the common ground shared by a diverse mix of Latino fans who understand and appreciate one another’s cultures.

Most of the evening’s great music was created pre-Ricky Martin and the so-called Latin Explosion of 1999, which quickly petered out. That was an era when artists were accepted for who they were, not who they might become in another language. Even someone like Chayanne, a handsome but average singer, was under pressure to switch to English, since success in Spanish was never considered good enough.

For providing this live reminder of the good not-so-old days, concert producers Clear Channel Music Group can be forgiven the obvious commercial calculation of ginning up a Latino trio to mimic the success of the Three Tenors or Simon Cowell’s Il Divo. Boy, there must be something seductive about good-looking male performers coming in threes and fours.

But the concept was so forced in this case that promoters couldn’t even come up with a name for the tour, which continues with another show in Irvine tonight before heading to other venues, including New York’s Madison Square Garden, next month. (They wisely rejected lame suggestions such as Los Tres Guapos and Los Gran Papis.)

In the end, ironically, the concert’s main fault was not taking full advantage of having these three talents on the same stage. They came out together at the end for only one number, “Amigo,” a moving ode to male friendship by Brazilian pop singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos. The late-’70s chestnut was a brilliant choice. The song’s clearly delineated lyrics allowed the vocalists to alternate lines, expressing various meanings of friendship to each other.

Far from a gimmick, the moment worked to reveal a real camaraderie that seems to have developed among them. (And it allowed Chayanne to show the subtle qualities of his modest voice, which were obliterated earlier during his loud and showy pop segment, when he appeared to be lip-syncing.)

So if the name had not already been taken by a famous comedy film, the tour could have been called the Three Amigos.

No joke.

*

Anthony, Fernandez, Chayanne

Where: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine

When: 8 tonight

Price: $30 to $128.50

Contact: (949) 855-8096