Kathleen Battle's appearance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Kent Nagano was the sort of display of brute diva-force that one assumed had disappeared with the downfall of the great musical and political dictatorships of the 20th century.
Even off-stage, Battle was determined to rule the rostrum. Preceding her first entrance with a series of proclamatory warm-up scales, Battle then interrupted Nagano's up-beat before Mozart's Overture to the Marriage of Figaro. Nothing was going to get in the way of her winning the audience's attention - certainly not the small matter of being in the green room rather than on the platform.
In a bizarrely ordered sequence of numbers - the overture was sandwiched between two of Susanna's arias from Figaro and the concert aria Misera, dove son! - Battle was at pains to give each a contrasting dramatic profile. Her costume - a black dress topped off with a swathe of pink extravagance - responded compliantly to her every command, creating a suitable coquettishness for Un moto di gioia (written for Figaro's 1789 Vienna run) and a seductive glamour in Deh vieni. But, sadly, this attire proved capable of greater variety than her voice.Unevenly balanced across her range, Battle was ill-equipped for the subtleties of some of Mozart's most delicate music.
But then subtlety was hardly on the cards in Battle's presentation. The way she ended Deh vieni with a sultry kiss to the audience signalled her concern for flamboyance first and music second. The nadir of her disregard of musical sense and structure was her performance of Mozart's motet, Exultate jubilate. Using Mozart to show off her prowess, she abused words and music alike in a wilfully distorted interpretation.
Some of Battle's grotesque milking of the audience might have been excusable had her singing come close to matching the supreme confidence of her showmanship. But there were few hints of any transcendent musicality.
Throughout, Nagano and the LPO were in bemused submission to the hollow domination of Battle's overpowering presence. The rest of the programme restored a balance of seriousness and integrity. The totally focused energy of Thomas Adès' These Premises are Alarmed - originally written in 1996 for Nagano and the Hallé Orchestra - was magnificently ebullient in the LPO's performance.
Nagano's well-judged account of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra ended the concert.
