Although it is a few years since Tony Bennett was the surprise hit at Glastonbury, the 76-year-old continues to enjoy the kind of lustrous reputation reserved for an elite handful of performers. Being the last of his kind helps; there is almost nowhere else you can turn if you want to hear a live performance of works by songwriters like Gershwin, Duke Ellington or Irving Berlin.

In addition, Bennett is a model of old-fashioned stagecraft. A born schmoozer, he hooks the songs together with anecdotes about where he heard them first or how his best buddy Frank Sinatra called out to him from the stage and urged him to sing a particular number. He can be a little too ingratiating, but he does manage to sell the illusion that, for an hour or so, we all have impeccable style and refined musical tastes, and know exactly how to mix the perfect whiskey sour.

Dublin's Vicar Street venue might have been designed with Bennett in mind, with most of the audience seated around small tables to create a supper-club atmosphere. When he did his party trick of putting down his microphone and singing Fly Me to the Moon with only Gray Sargent's semi-acoustic guitar as an accompaniment, he had no trouble projecting his voice to the back of the room.

But Bennett's microphone technique is as indispensable to his act as the immaculate suit, the permanent tan and the never-fading grin. It lets him get up close to a lyric to pick out the fine detail, as in his skittish reading of Steppin' Out or his brisk sprint through I Got Rhythm. Less convincingly, it tempts him into some ill-advised big climaxes - for instance, at the end of If I Ruled the World, where the voice had plenty of volume but had given up trying to guess what key it was supposed to be in.

Much sleeker and tighter were the Ellington tunes, In a Mellow Tone and Mood Indigo. Smile - prefaced by a panegyric to its author, Charlie Chaplin - was kept hovering by drummer Clayton Cameron's feathery touch on the brushes. For an encore, Bennett pondered the question of How Do You Keep the Music Playing? After 60 years in the business, he knows better than most.

· At the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7, tonight. Box office: 020-7589 8212. Then touring.