Adam Lambert 24/7 News

For about two hours, two of the founding members of the legendary British rock band, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, fronted by lead vocalist Adam Lambert, led a crowd of about 13,000 through a set list that spanned two dozen songs, some of them more than 40 years old. And it made for a night that was as sentimentally satisfying as it was relentlessly entertaining. Lambert, an “American Idol” runner-up in Season 8 (he lost to Kris Allen), is the ideal surrogate Freddie Mercury: He’s fearlessly campy and uninhibited, and he has the vocal might that can punch holes through arena walls.

They ended the first set with — what else? — “Bohemian Rhapsody,” turning over the chorus parts to footage from the original video, displayed on the large video screen. For such a complex and ornate song, it aroused a memorable, verbatim and rafter-rattling sing-along, equal in volume to the ovation for May’s guitar solo toward the end of it. As he did all night, Lambert sang everything just right: with much drama and aplomb but without overdoing it.