Hyperbole becomes Tony Bennett. His effusiveness is all-encompassing, gathering his audience, his musicians, the people who wrote the songs he sings, and even the singers who covered those songs before him into a warm, gushing embrace. Performing more than 90 minutes' worth of material at Suntory Hall March 19, the 73-year-old singing waiter from Astoria, Queens, dressed in a shiny royal blue suit and powder-blue tie, didn't always know which direction he should face. The audience was all around him, and he kept turning this way and that, nodding to sections and pointing at individuals, bowing or opening his arms after every phrase.

It's a given that saloon singers are slick and insincere. Frank Sinatra's pseudo-egghead stage banter was always laced with a drop of acid; and when he was in his cups (which was most of the time) he could be downright sarcastic.

But Bennett is sincere. A person who didn't mean what he said wouldn't come up with such odd off-the-cuff remarks. After drummer Clayton Cameron performed a riveting solo, Bennett told the audience that Yogi Berra once saw him and his band on TV and later told him he thought Clayton was "the best drummer since Gene Krupa." The mostly middle-aged audience may have known that Berra used to be the catcher for the New York Yankees, but I for one wasn't aware he was also an expert on jazz drumming.

And despite Bennett's reflexive use of the word "art" to describe everything he and the Ralph Sharon Quartet (whom he even referred to unironically as "artistes") were doing, the singer comes from an entertainment tradition that says your first obligation is to please the audience. That means you sing your hits, "I Wanna Be Around" and that San Francisco thing, without changing a lick.

It also means you do what you're known for, which in Bennett's case is building every song to a huge finish. During the final line of "Autumn Leaves," he literally went from a whisper to a belt that practically drowned out Sharon's lovely piano coda. This miscalculation, however, didn't prevent my heart from popping up into my throat.

The main critical complaint about Bennett's style used to be this extroverted quality, which translated as bombast on the uptempo numbers and moany dramaturgy on the ballads. But sometime in the '70s, around the time he did his two albums with pianist Bill Evans (and, not coincidentally, at a time when he was struggling with some difficult personal problems, including drugs), his style lost its perfervidness. The drama was still there, and sometimes the bombast, but it seemed rooted in experience rather than show biz.

Prior to a lightly swinging version of "All of Me," he said it was Billie Holiday's "signature song," which I assume is a private observation. When I think of Holiday I always think of "Strange Fruit" or "God Bless the Child," probably because she wrote them and they better represent the tragic aspects of her life. But Bennett's disposition and integrity would never allow him to sing a song about a lynching, and even when he did "Child" on his Holiday tribute album, it was a programmed duet with the late singer. He wouldn't presume to "interpret" such a personal song.

On the other hand, Bennett loves to reinvent standards made popular by others, and all through the evening he kept mentioning singers rather than songwriters. "I Got Rhythm" wasn't Gershwin's song, it was Ethel Merman's. He performed two back-to-back standards associated with vocalists -- Judy Garland ("Over the Rainbow") and Barbra Streisand ("People") -- who epitomize a cabaret style that Bennett does not adhere to.

His tribute to Fred Astaire inevitably featured some chipper dance steps, but it's difficult to think of two popular American singers as different in terms of timbre and phrasing as Bennett and Astaire.

So I was surprised he didn't do Sinatra's signature song, "One for My Baby." On his 1992 tribute to Ol' Red Eyes, he turns what was originally a maudlin ode to drunken self-pity into a spirited ode to drunken resignation, and in doing so treated it more honestly. It's why, conversely, Bennett has never been particularly successful with Sinatra's main man Cole Porter, who treated every emotion as a potential joke. Frank knew how to run with a joke. Tony takes a songwriter at his word.

The cardinal rule of Bennett's style of interpretive singing is to stay true to the lyrics, so as long as he eliminates any distance between his own sensibility and the words, he's doing it right. His version of the Kurt Weill ballad, "Speak Low," was hushed and desperate. "Time is a thief," he sang, letting the last word explode off his tongue.

He told the audience that it has always been his dream to play Suntory Hall, since it's one of the most acoustically excellent concert halls in the world. Bennett and his musicians were using a P.A., and the combination of electric enhancement and the hall's acoustic focusing gave the impression, at least from where I sat, that Bennett's voice was coming from somewhere about 4 meters above his head.

But since he was paying compliments to anyone and everyone (including "the wonderful philanthropic businessmen of Japan"), he couldn't leave out Suntory Hall, so he asked the sound guys to shut off the P.A. He then sang "Fly Me to the Moon" with just Gray Sargent's guitar accompaniment.

The intimacy was no longer conspiratorial. Despite that amazingly large profile of his, he suddenly seemed smaller and farther away. It was very moving, and many in the audience responded with a standing ovation, acknowledging not only his artistic confidence but his willingness to be vulnerable, a sure sign of sincerity if ever there was one.