Ten years ago, Kenneth Gayle was one of the newest faces in opera — handsome, smart, with a svelte figure, a young voice and a clear idea where he was going.

He had toured much of the United States as a youth as part of the Northwest Boychoir and graduated cum laude from the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University. But the Seattle native couldn't predict the things he would do and the places he would go in the next 10 years. He didn't know, for example, that he would be cast as one of the Three Mo' Tenors, going on the road to sing varied styles of music: opera, musical theater, jazz, gospel, blues, spirituals, and rhythm and blues.

The company of tenors — the African-American equivalent of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras — began in 2000 and tours throughout the United States. Gayle is part of the current group of tenors and sang on the Fox network as part of the 2004 NAACP Image Awards.

"That show is known for the breadth of the music, and that's one of the joys of performing," said Gayle. "Without the classical technical background, you can't hold your voice together."

Now based in Houston, Gayle will return to Everett for a program of opera music with the Everett Symphony, with which he first performed in 1994, at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Everett Civic Auditorium.

The evening will offer a "greatest hits" package of some of the world's best-known tenor arias, including arias from Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida" and "Rigoletto," Georges Bizet's "Carmen" and Giacomo Puccini's "Turandot." The orchestra will perform Ottorino Respighi's "The Pines of Rome" with eight members of the Everett Youth Symphony.

Gayle invests his concerts with the dramatics of grand opera, approaching soliloquies and love songs as "little dramatic scenes."

"When you're singing opera arias out of the context, you want to tell the story as clearly as possible, so the musical language and the verbal language strike the listener as clearly as if they were seeing the full production," he said.

At 36, Gayle is likely approaching the prime of his career. He has performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Seattle Opera and many other opera companies and orchestras. He sang Alfred in the Seattle Opera's "Die Fledermaus" and Arturo in the company's "Lucia di Lammermoor." He has received critical acclaim from The (Baltimore) Sun, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.

"Technically, they say between their 40s and mid-50s, tenors are in their prime," he said. "I've been singing for 10 years, and I'm still approaching my prime.

"What I try to do is to tap into the universal humanity of each story, the aspect of each character. Sometimes they're so fairy-tale and larger than life, but on closer examination you realize they're talking about basic concerns and confusions we can all relate to."

Thus Gayle looks for the human being in the womanizing, amoral Duke in "Rigoletto" and the weak-willed Don José in "Carmen." One of the newest works in Gayle's repertoire is "Celeste Aida."

Gayle has sung many oratorios and cantatas, and has helped premiere new operas as well as modern adaptations of old operas. He just finished playing the deposed king of Turkey in the Handel opera "Tamburlaine" at Baltimore's Opera Vivente.

The opera's setting was moved from the 1700s to the modern Middle East. Formal arias were given a twist, and the challenge was to find a modern style of movement that didn't inhibit 18th-century musical conventions.

"When we do method acting, if a director is smart, he can exploit that," Gayle said. It's tricky, but when it succeeds, he said, it can be "revelatory."

After the concert, Gayle will be available to meet Everett fans.

"One of the things I find myself missing is the beauty of the Northwest," he said. "It's so green, and the people are so warm and appreciative. They're a very honest audience. They know what they like."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com