A British idol hits some high notes

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Last year, tenor Paul Potts became a British television star - and an American YouTube star - singing "Nessun dorma," from Puccini's "Turandot," on the Simon Cowell-produced "Britain's Got Talent." Potts, a mobile-phone salesman whose musical aspirations had fallen victim to the vagaries of life, won the televised competition, signed a record contract, and embarked on a tour, which brought him to the Berklee Performance Center on Sunday.

It was a pop concert with a classical veneer: a conductor in tails (Mark Agnor) leading a 13-piece orchestra (like the singing, amplified) in crossover repertoire drawn largely from Potts's debut album. Many of the pop songs - including R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" - were sung in Italian, in harmonically unadventurous arrangements of sober rhythms and yearning strings. Schubert's "Ave Maria," conversely, had pop touches, from the opening bell-tree tintinnabulation to a rising modulation into a final chorus.

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