Gig review: Andre Rieu at First Direct Arena, Leeds

“We’re going to perform the most beautiful aria,” Andre Rieu tells Leeds’s First Direct Arena as he cues up Puccini’s Nessun dorma. Besides him, his Platinum Tenors – three tuxedoed men, barrel-chested and arranged from tallest to shortest – sketch a mock bow. “Whenever they sing this, they get a standing ovation,” he adds, before raising his eyebrows. “Wherever they go.”

Sure enough, 6,000 people duly rise to applaud them, dragged back repeatedly for a succession of bows alongside rows upon rows of musicians decked to the nines in penguin suits and pastel crinolines. At the forefront of it all, his greying shock of flyaway hair creeping towards the edge of a starched collar, the man of the moment grins.

Few classical artists have enjoyed the success that Rieu has in the contemporary era of popular music. One of the best-selling entertainers of his generation, and one of the most relentless live acts around – he has sold 40 million albums and plays more than 80 concerts every year – his shows have long since trumped critical perturbation to deliver near-unparallelled commercial prosperity; a patently ridiculous fusion of philharmonic versatility and operatic rigmarole, with more clapalongs this side of the Horse of the Year Show than anything else.

If Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra do not set the tone by entering through the crowd with handshakes and high-fives to Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators, then the violinist-conductor spells it out with a high-camp approach throughout, with Lara’s Granada and Peter’s Circus Renz buoyed by Spanish exclamations and smoking xylophones each.

With his 75h birthday around the corner, the King of the Waltz remains an unabashed purveyor of classical cheese; no gag is beneath him, nor no song beyond him, as displayed with a skit involving a pantomime bull that chases a soprano, before she returns to romp through Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.

Lone moments do break the spell; teenager singer Emma Kok, winner of The Voice Kids in Rieu’s native Netherlands, covers Eurovision ballad Voila to pin-drop effect, while Rieu is forced to handle a heckler after the Ukrainian folk tune Nitsch Jaka.

But by the time couples have swarmed to the concrete floor for the natural showstopper of Strauss’s The Blue Danube, the incantation of this all-night Bridgerton rager is complete. As balloons tumble from the roof, Rieu grins and bows again, work complete for another day.