Renée Fleming opened her recital by virtuosically praising God and ended it by rapturously metamorphosing into a tree. The pieces in question were the Laudamus Te from Mozart's Mass in C minor and the closing scene of Strauss's Daphne. Given that Fleming's voice has been described as everything from heaven-sent to an unstoppable force of nature, the two works could not have been more appropriate.

In between, however, came a mixture of glory and smut. This was, in part, the live gig of Fleming's latest album, Homage: The Age of the Diva, an examination of the work of the great singing actresses of the turn of the 20th century and an exploration of some of the lesser-known byways of post-Romantic opera.

Her voice reared and plunged almost indecently through an aria from Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane - about a woman who gives herself to a condemned man in a cell in the belief that she is bringing him divine love. A chunk of Smetana's Dalibor was a display of heated sensual ecstasy and thrilling high notes. Everything she did was riveting, though she could have done with better collaborators than conductor Andreas Delfs and the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.