By Perry Tannenbaum

The famed perpetrators of the Singing Christmas Tree, Carolina Voices, usually shuttle between Yuletide and Broadway fare. When they land on the sort of repertoire I'd really love to hear, previewing the programming they're planning to unveil at Piccolo Spoleto, Sue and I are already down in Charleston.

So I was excited to learn that Carolina Voices would be fluttering down from their tree as their Festival Singers presented one of the great masterworks of modern choral music, Duruflè's Requiem, at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. The Afro megachurch on Beattie's Ford Road is home to a mighty organ — mightier than the beast that adorns the upstage wall at Belk Theater. Extra bonus: the Beattie's Ford instrument is fully functional — and it figures prominently in Duruflè's scoring.

That was enticement enough. But I also learned that, later on Saturday evening, the Queen City's queen of burlesque, Deana Pendragon, was marshalling an invasion of The Visulite Theatre. For a worthy cause: this would be Big Mamma D's House of Burlesque in a special breast cancer benefit edition. This combination of the sacred and the profane loomed as a potent temptation.

I dutifully followed Oscar Wilde's infallible remedy in ridding myself of this temptation: I yielded to it.

Ah, the irony. For all his outrè decadence, Wilde was incurably elegant — with a healthy regard for zesty American spirit. So I'm certain he would have preferred the holy rites on Beattie's Ford to the unholies on Elizabeth.

Carolina Voices received robust support, to be sure, from an assortment of Friendship singers and musicians. But the full armada didn't grace the hallowed part of the hall until after intermission. Monty Bennett was the lone emissary at the five-tiered keyboard, demonstrating the earthshaking wallop of the new 168-stop Fratelli Ruffati pipe organ with John Ernest Cook's "Fanfare." As the floor trembled beneath us, Bennett floated some trumpet flourishes that originated high up in the balcony.

Then the choir joined him on a couple of Ralph Vaughan Williams nuggets, "The Hundredth Psalm" and the more substantial "Toward the Unknown Region." Set to text by Walt Whitman — the opening poem in one of his final volumes, Whispers of Heavenly Death — this choral meditation was a perfect preface to the Requiem. The RVW accompaniment, scaled down from orchestra to organ, actually worked better than the similarly reduced Duruflè, the fortissimo section, beginning with "Then we burst forth," gloriously filling the sanctuary.

Deprived of its full orchestral plumage, the Requiem remained a lovely caged bird. The Sanctus swelled to a magical "Hosanna" and the Libera Me rang with its terror, but divvying up the delicate Pie Jesu among the 14 women robbed us of the sublimity that a single soprano can bring to the plaint. Without trumpets or timpani, the Offertorium lacked its knockout punch and drama. Yet the concluding In Paradisum was so sobering that no one applauded until the chorus began filing out.

There was much more to celebrate when the Friendship Choirs filed forward, backed by three keyboards, drums, and electric bass. Here the gospel style of presentation decreed that each hymn was fronted by a solo vocalist. While the parade of soloists went uncredited in the program booklet, all shone brightly and spread a righteous spirit over "Wait," "Faithful Over a Few Things," "Over There," and a devastating finale, "Midnight Cry." Midway through this glory, the Festival Singers returned, trying their hands at "Praise His Holy Name" before integrating into the choral mass for the final two testimonies.

Want to hear what all the shouting was about? The "Spiritual Landscapes" concert repeats this Sunday at 3:00 p.m. You do need to follow the mighty music makers out to Davidson, however, where they'll perform at St. Alban's Episcopal.

Cut to Elizabeth Avenue, where the only testifying we saw at Big Mamma's Burlesque was Tits McGee twitching and squirming out of a bright red choir robe. As the spasmodic ritual climaxed, little was left over McGee's fetching frame beside a G-string and a pair of pasties.

Nothing else at Mamma D's was quite that profane. I often found myself longing for more profanation, particularly when the comedy of emcees Johnny Anonymous and Lefty LeBlue grew stale. Or when the cavalcade of strippers yielded a tedium of twirling tassels.

The ambiance at The Visulite doesn't help Big Mamma achieve her aim of presenting "a celebration of beauty and femininity." Audience begins queuing up on Elizabeth Avenue an hour before showtime to get the best tables and seats. Savvy move. Latecomers don't merely get bad seats — they get no seats and must stand. In Visulite's layered layout, people closest to the stage must stand during the entire show, sitting on the floor or escaping to the bar at intermission.

Above them, a row of tables looks out over a railing, the choicest seats in the house. Half of the crowd stands behind them. The bar area is a level higher — and further away — with stools and cocktails overlooking yet another set of railings. That is where Sue and I finally found stools after standing for about 45 minutes. During intermission, I scouted out the possibility of moving to the front and watching the second hour standing, the way the masses enjoy the Proms in the UK.

Nope. Brits don't have to contend with the high concentration of smoke that I found near the footlights. We stayed where we were.

That imposes a certain penalty. For we heard lusty cheers when the strippers did their floor work, but we couldn't see what the noise was all about.

Mamma D was arguably the best thing in the show. Yes, she is big, but we saw her all too seldom last Saturday. D's amplitude added unforgettable oomph to her rendition of "When You're Good to Mama." This wondrous vocal was paired with a performance by Leggs La Rue, best described as an S&M triathlete riding her bicycle upside down. Without the bicycle.

I genuinely savored the seductive artistry of a couple of the women — Miss Kitty's fevered way with her huge white feather fans, and Taloolah Love's exotic manipulation of her diaphanous orange-fuchsia wings. The classy plus-sized Vagina Jenkins was nearly as good, a welcome shot of chocolate.

Monkey the Pick Up Artist (on loan from the Wicked Witch of the West — in Waldorf Astoria livery) was a special audience favorite, clearing the stage of props between acts and exuding pure servility. Confidentially, a few of the most outlandish audience members were as much worth gawking at as he.

Leaned on the wrong way, The Heidi Chronicles can become a mawkish, self-pitying wallow in boomer angst. That's what director Julie Janorschke seems bent on doing in the current Theatre Charlotte production, with her star, Kristy Morley, a willing accomplice.

Balanced against the lingering voids in Heidi Holland's life, our protagonist should appear before us as a charismatic lecturer, poised and brilliant in her mastery — and feminist deconstruction — of art history. Forget charisma, Morley isn't even audible behind her lectern, and the stingy design budget doesn't equip her with a slide show behind her presentation. A certain sexiness is denied to Heidi when she's stripped of her clicker.

Sorry, folks. Slides were already a ho-hum part of art history lectures 40 years ago. Nowadays, Heidi could be wielding a laptop.

Some of Morley's quietude rubs off, I'm afraid, on John Cunningham, playing the restlessly brilliant and entrepreneurial rapscallion Scoop Rosenbaum. In contrast with others I've seen in the role, who were cast for their knee-buckling looks rather than ethnicity, there's a recognizably Jewish element to Cunningham's portrayal. Enough for me to realize that he is likely accenting the wrong syllable when he calls our heroine Heidella. The best performances come from the pros who play Heidi's best friends. Dave Blamy, as gay pediatrician Peter Patrone, puts some sizzling electricity into the pivotal scene where Heidi's gloom takes a devastating reality check. Meghan Lowther not only nails Heidi's lifelong girlfriend, Susan Johnston, with a spot-on performance, she provides us with the Chronicle part of the comedy, her successive transformations mirroring the decades as time marches on.

Sue didn't wait for me to ask at intermission. From the fifth row, she said she was missing a third of the dialogue, not a good percentage when you're dealing with Wendy Wasserstein's witty badinage. At the back of the house, where the ushers sit, the dropout rate reported in at two-thirds. Clearly, this Heidi needs much more volume — and cheer.

I had to pity the predicament of my colleague at The Observer after last Friday night's Charlotte Symphony Orchestra concert at Belk Theater. So fiery, inspired, and technically sharp was their performance of Beethoven's Seventh that it would be foolhardy to presume that readers of the newspaper's Saturday morning review would be treated to such sweet thunder on Saturday night.

If you haven't noticed, CSO can now play with razor sharp clarity for maestro Christof Perick at tempi they'd hardly even attempt in the bygone millennium. Despite a slight fluff from the brass, the bite of the timpani and trumpets was thrilling as the opening vivace climaxed. Worth applauding — which CSO's sophisticated subscribers naturally did. There really was brio in the closing allegro, which begin with an arrogant snarl and took no prisoners. Everybody onstage seemed to understand every note. More important, they all seemed to be relishing the ride.

No, I'd expect that Friday night's pair of horn concerti was more like what greeted the Saturday night crowd. Guest soloist Eric Ruske performed on a French horn that looked as lovingly worn and battered as Manny Ramirez' batting helmet. The Mozart Concerto #4 — inexplicably presented by Perick and the CSO for the first time ever — was a winsome appetizer. But Ruske and the orchestra were far more commanding in another E-flat gem, the Strauss #1. A nice little lift-off greeted us in the closing rondo, abetted by the interplay between Elizabeth Landon and Amy Whitehead on first and second flutes, with true grandeur in Ruske's tone as he attacked the final flourishes.