Anne Curtis is more than master biritera off-key

It’s been almost a week now yet people can’t seem to stop talking of Anne Curtis and her No Other Concert: Anne-Bisyosa Live! World Tour where she apparently achieved the impossible — filling up the Smart Araneta Coliseum. It didn’t appear to bother Anne that she didn’t have the vocal chops to impress an audience. All she knew was that it was her dream to sing and that she wouldn’t stop nagging the management at Viva to give her a solo album under Viva Records. And when the album reached platinum, she turned her attention on a solo concert.

In her pop album Anne-Bisyosa, Anne discovered the songs she could do that the public loved like Cindy Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, as well as Bizarre Love Triangle, and what has evolved into her signature anthem, Alone originally sung by the American rock band Heart. Our first taste of the singer in Anne was during the Martin Nievera-Side A Araneta concert where she sang Alone as a duet with Joey Generoso, often going off-key, for which she apologized and the crowd roared. Espying Martin in the wings, Anne called out to him to likewise duet with her, which Martin refused and turned into a joke. The crowd roared even more. This was when we decided that Anne had it in her, the lakas ng loob, the kapal ng mukha, the guts and gumption to turn a defect into a success, to laugh at her own deficiencies.

And soon enough, a few months after, came her concert during which she filled the Araneta like no one ever has. In the audience were her mom and dad from Australia, her Viva and ABS-CBN family headed by Charo Santos-Concio and Cory Vidanes. Elsewhere we noticed Kris Aquino and the Gutierrez twins way in the back. Possibly, there was really no more space for even them.

The Anne-Bisyosa concert was a variety show blown up to gigantic proportions. There was a full orchestra, back-up singers, numerous dancers, hosts and jurors from Showtime where Anne mastered her eardrum-breaking birit prowess, guests in the audience who were asked to come up the stage, Sam Milby who came straight from the airport for his song-and-guitar duet with Anne, the No Other Woman co-stars Cristine Reyes and Derek Ramsay, and the much-awaited duet with Popstar Princess Sarah Geronimo.

But for us, the best segment of all came in the middle of the concert — the battle of the wits and body beautiful in twin costumes with Vice Ganda who just wouldn’t allow this pint of a girl with the perfect figure and face to get the better of him. Feigning hurt and sarcasm, Vice told Anne in Filipino, “It took me years of mastering the audience to fill up the Araneta, and it took you two months? Just because you learned from us at Showtime how to birit off-key you think you are the best?”

Video grab of Anne in one of her ‘amazing’ acts during her concert

Vice challenged the audience to be the judge as Anne tore off portions of her costume piece by piece and Vice did the same, which we swear had people close to rolling on the aisles. The audience waited with bated breath the final disrobing into a tanga, and when it did, there was no question at all. The master still held the crown! Beauty, pulchritude and lakas ng loob were no match indeed for experience!

What Anne validated, however, was more than enough. She had proved that she was well-loved by her co-workers in an industry characterized by inggit and paninira, that she had an audience who loved her to death, that she would do anything (coming down from the ceiling on a bed, singing while being held up by dancers in a reclining position) without complaining, that even in an intrigue-laden occupation, good begets good. And it is in this, we think, that Anne Curtis excels. Congratulations!

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