Pop goes the opera

PROFESSIONAL sourpuss Simon Cowell, from whom nary is heard an encouraging word when he’s gunning down “American Idol” contestants, seemed Saturday to have left his sangfroid at home as he gushed over the four singers warbling before him.

“Oh, yeah!” he cheered after one number. “I love it!”

What did it take to unlock Cowell’s inner cheerleader?

Only Il Divo, the pop-classical quartet that recently debuted at No. 1 on the national sales chart with its third album, “Ancora,” and consequently sold out the 6,200-seat Gibson Amphitheatre, where Cowell was among the ecstatic onlookers.

It also helped that the quartet, a virtual United Nations of steamy hunkitude, is Cowell’s brainchild.

“Honestly, to see these guys perform tonight is the proudest moment of my life,” Cowell said during the show. “I came up with the idea four years ago. I just thought we should bring this music to the masses like we’ve done tonight. You see the reaction.”

That’d be the swooning fans, mostly women, and a veritable hailstorm of clothing: blouses, scarves and what appeared to be a pair of pink panties and a frilly red negligee.

Not the response given most singers trained in classical conservatories, but then, this multiplatinum-selling collective doesn’t consider itself part of the opera world. They call their music “popera.”

Assembled by Cowell after a two-year international talent search, the GQ-handsome bandmates are long-haired Swiss tenor Urs Buhler, clean-cut San Diego-born tenor David Miller, French pop star Sebastien Izambard and silky Spanish baritone Carlos Marin. (Like many boy bands, the four stars do away with surnames on their latest CD, “Ancora.”)

Il Divo -- the male equivalent of “diva” -- is adored by fans and savaged by critics for mixing opera chops with mainstream world music and pop staples to achieve something closer in vibe and sound to an operetta or a Spanish zarzuela than bona fide opera. But perhaps more important, especially to the women on hand at the Gibson, the singers looked in their shiny designer suits to have burst from the cover of a Harlequin Romance novel.

Backed by a 20-piece orchestra and a five-piece rock band, they descended a semiround of faux-Greek amphitheater stairs beneath Doric columns to thunderous applause.

“They’re certainly good-looking, vibrant young men,” said audience member Clara Vega, with a laugh. “It definitely helps.”

The group is already a worldwide juggernaut. It has released three albums in less than a year and topped charts here as well as in Spain, Finland, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia, selling over 5 million units, according to Sony BMG. Il Divo’s first album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 last April and has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. And its holiday album, “The Christmas Collection,” was No. 1 on the Classical Crossover chart for 10 weeks, selling 544,000 copies.

But “Ancora’s” No. 1 debut this month stunned many American music journalists. According to Geoff Mayfield, Billboard magazine’s director of charts, the album benefited from release-date serendipity and the support of an adult audience. “Ancora” sold 156,000 copies in its first week, not necessarily enough to land a chart-topping hit during busier times of the year, he said.

“It’s an older audience,” Mayfield said last week. “A lot of the people who buy Josh Groban or Andrea Bocelli’s nonclassical recordings would be susceptible to buy Il Divo. They had exposure on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ right around the time the album came out, and that certainly picked up awareness. The adult consumer has been pretty important for the last few years.”

And in the last few weeks. Mayfield pointed out that adult support also landed Barry Manilow’s “The Greatest Songs of the Fifties” atop the album chart two weeks after “Ancora’s” release.

Where Il Divo resides on the Three Tenors/Backstreet Boys divide was made clear Saturday by the group’s choice of librettos, or in this case, cover songs: no Brahms, but Toni Braxton’s post-breakup lament, “Un-Break My Heart”; instead of Bach, there was Les Baxter’s soaring “Unchained Melody”; rather than an aria from the repertoire of Caruso, it was Eric Carmen’s anguished ‘70s radio chestnut “All By Myself” (each Hispanicized, respectively, as “Regresa a Mi,” “Senza Catene” and “Solo Otra Vez”).

“Popera” was just fine by Franchesca and Christopher Morgan from Temecula, who traveled three hours to see the concert (there was traffic) and describe themselves as “not opera people.” They own two of the group’s three albums and said Cowell’s influence wasn’t least in their decision to buy them.

“Il Divo is not all-the-way classical, and we’re more comfortable with that,” Franchesca Morgan, 46, said. “And having Simon’s approval was definitely a big vote of confidence. We’re big-time ‘American Idol’ fans. He goes for tone, pitch and passion.”

Like the U.K.’s chart-topping female “contemporary opera” duo, Opera Babes, before them, Il Divo’s popularity owes as much to the members’ sex appeal and interpersonal chemistry as to vocal quality alone.

The quartet engaged in canned stage patter; they gently chided Buhler for being Swiss, told self-deprecating jokes and cracked wise about meeting one another’s mothers. A Washington Post reviewer came away from a performance this month seriously underwhelmed: “Il Divo? Quattro formaggi,” he wrote.

F. Paul Driscoll, editor of Opera News, has limited praise for the ensemble’s opera-inspired sound but stops short of condemning the group for diluting classical music, even if Il Divo’s album sales reflect a triumph more of marketing than art.

“As an act, they’re very effective, talented and very charming,” he said. “In terms of the real opera world, I don’t think they’re a blip on the radar. They’re the classical version of a boy band, manufactured to fill a perceived need on the part of a recording company.”

Cowell, who lives in L.A. when he is judging “American Idol,” was seated Saturday in the orchestra area (directly in front of a reporter) and was the first to clap when a song ended and among the first on his feet for their several standing ovations.

His response was more in line with that of Rosamelia Martinez, 26, who came from a small town in Colombia specifically to catch Il Divo in the Southland. She said critics who focus on the group’s physical appearance -- or tried to judge them by the standards of classical music -- are missing the point.

“Looks are like a hook, but Il Divo has something underneath -- they are real people,” she said. “And many reviewers judge them in terms of opera. It’s unfair! This is a pop group. It’s different from opera.”