For the second half of the program, he and the orchestra were joined by three members from the Style of Five, a contemporary folk ensemble from St. Petersburg: Natalia Shkrebko on domra, Irina Ershova on alto domra and gusli, and Valentin Zaviriukha on accordion.

(If group leader Evgeny Stetsyuk was on stage playing synthesizers, I couldn’t see or hear him; he was, however, credited with all the second-half arrangements.) Midway through, Orbelian announced that they were going to make some changes to the program.

In fact, they’d already moved up two numbers, Boris Fomin’s “Tolko ras” (“Only Once”) and Pavel Bulakov’s “Gori, gori, moya zvezda” (“Shine, Shine, My Star”), on which Hvorostovsky had done some of his most fervent singing, though a number of audience heads were buried in the program lyrics trying to figure out where he was.

Two Neapolitan folk songs, for which we had no lyrics, were substituted, the domras acting as mandolins, and finally “O sole mio,” which sounded like “O sole mie” in Hvorostovsky’s undistinguished Italian enunciation. There was no want of grand manner, however, and at one point the two trumpet players stood up and could be seen wearing sombreros.