Joyce DiDonato's acclaim this side of the Atlantic has been less of a rise, more of an explosion. Barely 18 months since the Kansas mezzo's UK stage debut, in the Royal Opera's Barber of Seville, this recital was so oversubscribed it was virtually impossible for anyone outside the Wigmore's rarefied Friends group to get a ticket. And the audience would not let her go without hearing one of her calling-card Rossini arias, in this case Una voce poco fa.

A showstopper in every way, this encore came as an exclamation mark at the end of a more smoothly punctuated main programme; indeed, the repertoire in the first half was a touch subdued.

DiDonato began with five songs by Bizet - whose Ouvre ton coeur shows the young composer who would eventually write Carmen already dabbling in Spanish sounds - with pianist Julius Drake supplying strumming guitar rhythms. The relentlessly even word-setting in some of the later songs formed a greater challenge to DiDonato's expressive imagination, but in Farewell of the Arabian Hostess, she reeled us in with long, slow crescendos and compelling introspection.

Rossini's Joan of Arc saw DiDonato on more familiar ground, stylishly negotiated. But this monologue, essentially a slow and a fast aria linked together, takes a while to catch fire, and here, especially, Drake could have been more extrovert.

However, the entirely Iberian second half raised the temperature. Perhaps it's only natural that DiDonato, so well schooled in Rossinian decoration, should be able to wrap her weighty yet gleaming voice deftly around those little Spanish twists. Everything seemed natural and heartfelt as she captured, with Drake, the mournful passion of Granados' three Maja Dolorosa songs, brought a touch of chesty cantaora sound to De Falla's spirited Polo, and finally threw off Montsalvatge's Canto Negro like the star she is rapidly becoming.