Samuel Ramey is an elegant devil.

Slender-legged and barrel-chested, silver-grey hair, clad in all-black tails, he commanded the stage with a graceful ease, his bass voice emanating from vast depths unseen

In concert with the Honolulu Symphony, Ramey sang like the devil himself, seducing his audience with deliciously diabolical selections from his "A Date with the Devil" recording, a series of operatic incarnations of Mephistopheles by Berlioz, Boito, Gounod, Stravinsky, and Meyerbeer.

Now in his mid-sixties, Ramey has an impressive career that has lasted well over 30 years and counting. Few operatic careers last so long. His voice has lost some power overall and some of the fullness in his uppermost range, but he still challenges a full orchestra and sings with exceptional beauty.

Young singers should take note: Ramey's is a voice that has been well trained, well maintained and well treated. A lifetime of singing is chiseled on his face, visible facial muscles sculpting its character, yet his voice reveals none of the ragged edges of overuse that so often start showing up after only a few years of singing on large stages.

Ramey's voice is of marvelous quality, with pitch-black timbre often described as dark chocolate but clear as a cloudless night, resonant and luxurious.

His production is so secure that all the technical aspects of singing reside quietly in the background, keeping the focus on the music and on conveying each song's story. On Friday, he told those stories with pristine diction and silken melodic lines that glided through flurries of notes without a hitch. Bass voices do not tend toward agility, but Ramey's does.

Samuel Wong returned as the guest conductor, recreating once again the Honolulu Symphony's signature sound that he developed during his tenure here: vibrant, energetic, well-blended.

The brass delivered full, focused choirs, walls of sound that thrilled; woodwind solos by Scott Anderson (clarinet), Erica Peel (flute) and Scott Janusch (oboe) shone.

And the string sections played as one, their articulation both nuanced and clean, especially in Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette," a piece that is rarely performed in concerts and that elicited chuckles in recognition.

Friday's audience grumbled a bit over the lack of supertitle translations for the songs and a missing translation in the program but was thrilled by Ramey's singing and Wong's return, applauding and clamoring for more in a standing ovation.

Ramey responded with two encores, "Nonnes qui reposez" from Meyerbeer's (Robert le Diable), and a beautiful rendition of Jerome Kern's "Old Man River."