With few rivals to challenge her for the crown of opera's reigning diva, Angela Gheorghiu offered a packed Barbican Hall eight familiar items from her repertoire in her programme with the London Symphony Orchestra under Ion Marin. This was not an occasion for her to conquer new artistic fields, though she did manage to flaunt three different dresses.

Much of the programme was cannily selected to display her strengths. She let herself in easily with Giordani's Caro Mio Ben, an 18th-century song no aspiring student can avoid learning. But she brought to it a glowing tone and an idiomatic command of Italian that few could match. Handel's Lascia Ch'io Pianga from Rinaldo might seem territory ring-fenced for baroque specialists these days, but the sheer lusciousness of Gheorghiu's sound, together with her immaculate legato, gave it unusual conviction.

Three Puccini items, plus Nedda's aria from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, demonstrated that the verismo repertory, above all, is her happiest hunting ground. Here, her exotic palette of lyric soprano colours shone brightest, even if Butterfly's Un Bel Di took her beyond her natural limits. Finest of all was the Rondine aria, which sounds so good coming from Gheorghiu's throat that Puccini might have composed it especially for her: her floated top notes were sheer heaven. More surprisingly, she settled with ease and some dramatic savvy into the lower register of the Carmen Habanera.

The LSO played strongly for Marin in the orchestral items, another hackneyed group including a brassy Nabucco overture and a glossy Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. Wisely, the orchestra chose to ignore his hyper-theatrical gestures in Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture, thereby managing to save not only their reputation, but also the composer's.