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In the stentorian 18th-century cadences of historian Edward Gibbon and essayist Samuel Johnson, he painted a heroic portrait of that nation of shopkeepers and saw Britain’s current troubles in light of its glorious past.

He is perhaps best known for his assortment of bow ties, his stentorian voice and his ability to deliver a 20-minute sermon without notes.

The tenor Russell Thomas was smoothly stentorian if bland as Otello; perhaps, without the journey of the first three acts, this half-hour excerpt is fated to come across as anticlimactic.

After the group recruited the stentorian Toronto vocalist David Clayton-Thomas, its self-titled second album exploded, generating three Top 5 singles: “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.”

Lowered from the flies and walking amid images of planets and stars, she is interrupted for stretches by a stentorian chorus.