Serate Musicali ("musical evenings") is the name given to a clutch of small-scale works written by Rossini for performance at his Paris soirées, long after his career as an opera composer was over. Consisting of songs, arias and duets with piano accompaniment, they are party pieces, often used by divas and divos in search of encores.

But this concert, organised by pianist Roger Vignoles, and featuring soprano Miah Persson, mezzo Stella Doufexis and tenor Bruce Ford, offered a rare opportunity to hear them in quantity, and the dividends proved enormous. They avoid emotional extremes and the tone is urbane, witty and often erotic. Their stylistic range is wide and teasingly experimental. An impassioned Ave Maria finds the vocal line oscillating between two notes, while the piano carries the emotional and melodic weight. Adieu à la vie confines the singer to a declamatory monotone and is even more startling. Rossini's songs may be slight, but many of them pre-empt the grander statements of Liszt and Berlioz.

There was some gorgeous singing, too. Ford, in better voice than I have heard him for a while, flung out the coloratura of La Danza with raffish ease, and was impeccably Byronic in L'Esule. Doufexis, a great artist, was suggestive in La Regata Veneziana, replacing the usual girlish naivety with something altogether more indecent. Persson was less effective, largely because Rossini's wide-ranging tessitura allows her few sustained flights into her upper registers. She did tremendous things, however, with the infantilism of La Chanson du Bébé. Vignoles, meanwhile, was, as ever, the most stylish of accompanists.