LANE, MERRILL WITH KOL ECHAD CHORALE

Like (the late) Ethel Merman before him, Robert Merrill seems destined to sing healthily right into a ripe old age.

Now 70, an eminence he achieved two weeks ago, the veteran American baritone from Brooklyn made two Southern California appearances over the weekend, and showed that his vocal resonance of yore survives as handsomely as does the singer himself.

In a mixed-bag program shared with another American operatic veteran, Gloria Lane, and with the Kol Echad Chorale and Orchestra, Saturday night at Temple Bat Yahm, Merrill sang an excerpt from Ernest Bloch’s “Avodath hakodesh,” two Mozart arias and Gershwin’s “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin” on the program proper.

That agenda closed with “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” sung with Lane; among the encores, Merrill offered two excerpts from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

The ringing, Italianate quality of Merrill’s baritone remains undiminished, or at least seemed so in the positive acoustical ambiance of the Back Bay Temple in Newport Beach. Moreover, the singer, accompanied carefully by conductor Alan Weiner and Weiner’s 21-voice chorus and 29-member orchestra--all crowded together on a narrow playing area--gave every evidence of having a good time.

Of course, the weaknesses in his art remain: the semaphoric and off-putting use of arms; the missing facial gestures and textual point-making; a general lack of musical and dynamic subtlety. Still, the voice survives, and the singer’s pleasure in sharing it.

Lane, whose program bio revealed that she retired from singing in 1977, gave solid performances of arias from “Carmen” and “Cavalleria Rusticana,” plus “Begin the Beguine” and the two duets with Merrill; her Italian sound seems similarly well-preserved and idiomatic.

Weiner’s unorthodox conducting style nevertheless seemed to accomplish his musical ends efficiently; at this point, his strong little orchestra performs more successfully than his very mixed, and remarkably unblended, little chorale.