Renée Fleming, RPO, Festival Hall

The irony won’t have been lost on many in the audience that the South Bank’s International Voices series began with Ballet. A whole first half of it, actually. Just as well the diva-in-waiting – the almost indecently glamorous Renée Fleming – knows the value of expectation and anticipation. Her very first album was entitled The Beautiful Voice and if that isn’t pressure for a burgeoning career I don’t know what is.

But Fleming has certainly fulfilled that side of the promise and she is now in a place where voice, temperament, and technique are one and the singing radiates a combination of ease and satisfaction. It is the most gorgeous instrument – of that there is no doubt – probably the finest of its kind since Kiri Te Kanawa and, interestingly enough, a singer subject to the same criticisms – that the words are too opaque and the sound too self-regarding.

But Fleming is a throw-back to a time when style was all and the emotion was truly connected to the beauty and nuance of the line. There is nothing more suspenseful than a long and exquisitely modulated legato; there is nothing more heart-stopping than breath control that can spin phrases to beyond one’s imagining. That’s bel canto.

And style extends beyond the singing to presentation, glamour, and star quality. Fleming has those in abundance and just the anticipation of what she will be wearing whips her adoring fans into a frenzy. On this night it was Vivienne Westwood – a fabulous coffee soufflé of a frock – and the designer was, of course, there to cast an approving eye.

But just four numbers and one encore? Isn’t that a case of a little Fleming not going nearly far enough? I appreciate that on this occasion she was officially a tour guest of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under their Principal Conductor-to-be, Charles Dutoit, but as a key component of the South Bank’s International Voices series she surely needed to be a bigger part of this programme. Still, it was a neat idea to position her – and let’s be frank here - mature Tatyana beside the star-crossed lovers of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and it has to be said that whilst she lacked the youthful brightness, keenness and consonance for the celebrated “Letter Scene” from Eugene Onegin it’s amazing how much of the character’s impetuosity came through. Again the styling of it was a little old-fashioned but come the still centre of the aria where Tatyana asks if this man Onegin is to be her guardian angel or seducer, her rarified pianissimo singing left the question literally hanging in the air, asked but not answered.

Then came a couple of novelties from her new Verismo album: Leoncavallo’s take on La Bohème with Mimi and Musette offering testimonials of each other in the manner of coquettish music hall turns. Now that was decidedly soufflé-like singing. And rare Giordano from Siberia where the mores of love were spun eternally long.

Finally, Puccini, with Fleming pulling out the big guns for the final scene of Manon Lescaut and showing off some now highly developed chest tones. Of course, there is no real spinto push to the sound: it never loses its soft contours, even at full tilt. And even the odd phrases where she did nail the words with some attitude simply left one wanting more where they came from. But then she gave us the inevitable “O mio babbino caro” (more echoes of Te Kanawa) and making free with the portamento made it sound so easy and so beautiful that one’s criticisms suddenly seemed churlish.

One shouldn’t underestimate Charles Dutoit’s contribution to the evening. He is a real prospect for the RPO, I think, and on the evidence of his whistle-stop package tour through Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet – brightly lit and open-textured in his characteristic way – he could be the man to harness the orchestra’s enthusiasm and discover a new refinement in their playing.

For this particular evening, though, it wasn’t all over – in fact it didn’t even really begin – until the svelte lady sang.