We consider "Lagrangian" reduced-basis methods for single-parameter symmetric coercive elliptic partial differential equations. We show that, for a logarithmic-(quasi-)uniform distribution of sample points, the reduced-basis approximation converges exponentially to the exact solution uniformly in parameter space. Furthermore, the convergence rate depends only weakly on the continuity-coercivity ratio of the operator: thus very low- dimensional approximations yield accurate solutions even for very wide parametric ranges. Numerical tests (reported elsewhere) corroborate the theoretical preditions.