This was a curious occasion. Billed as "The Ten Tenors gala", and initially promising a lineup of singers ranging from the starry to the little known, it seemingly went through multiple problems - including the withdrawal of conductor Tugan Sokhiev and no fewer than five of the projected 10 tenors - before reaching its final format.

What we wound up with was Argentinian heartthrob José Cura, his voice in excellent shape, singing the occasional aria, then taking over the baton while nine unknowns, all in their 20s, went through their paces. The result felt like a cross between a public audition and a talent contest, with many of the audience scribbling marks out of 10 in their programmes and groups of supporters vociferously - at times intrusively - cheering on their favourites.

If good singing can be defined as a combination of vocal beauty with sharpness of characterisation and communicative power, then two of the nine distinguished themselves. Dmitri Voropaev captured the complex mixture of self-deprecating shyness and assertiveness that characterises Mozart's Don Ottavio before seducing everyone with the Indian Guest's tales from Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko. Dante Alcala, meanwhile, was every inch the charming cad as the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, before turning to the darker sexual obsessions of Loris from Giordano's Fedora.

Elsewhere, however, the ideal combination proved elusive. Juan Carlos Valls and Woo Kyung Kim revealed thrilling voices without, as yet, much interpretative depth. Adrian Dwyer, however, had a fine way with words, though, lacked ideal beauty of tone. Kostatyn Andreyev belted out a stupendous top C in Che Gelida Manina but was otherwise rhythmically too wayward for comfort. A couple did themselves no favours by choosing the wrong music: Ronald Samm is no Otello, I'm afraid, nor should Dmitri Korchak be singing Nadir's stratospheric aria from Bizet.