Never underestimate Cecilia Bartoli. If she packs light, she still packs a punch. And if anyone felt short-changed before this sedate-sounding evening of bel-canto salon songs, or, as she called it, a Soirée Rossiniana, they could hardly have complained afterwards.

There are umpteen singers who like to dip a toe in this sort of repertoire, whether for that high-fee but low-maintenance recital, or that “hilarious” encore at the Wigmore after a more heavy-duty evening. But they don’t do it with a quarter as much committment as Bartoli does. And anyone half-wishing that the majestic mezzo would just drop the whimsical side-projects and sing something proper such as Carmen should have been there to watch her bring these miniatures to enthralling life in the company of her avuncular accompanist, Sergio Ciomei.

It isn’t just the natural warmth and fruitiness of the Bartoli timbre (bottle that, and you have Italy on tap), but her shrewd understanding of the salon genre. Musically complex pieces these numbers might not be, but they’re on ambiguous emotional ground, playfully riffing on operatic archetypes rather than simply downsizing them to the drawing room.

Bartoli knows that, so when she’s the yodelling heroine of Rossini’s L’Orpheline du Tyrol she manages to be both marvellously affecting and endearingly silly. Cooing like the birds depicted in Or che di fiori adorno, she undercuts the sugar by becoming a narrator more in love with her own voice than anything around her.

That’s the third weapon in the Bartoli armoury, of course: her feeling for character. In Rossini’s now rather overperformed trio of Venetian songs, La regata veneziana, you heard the voice of a coquettish girl on the canalside cheering on her lover. Bellini, whose long-breathed melodies are best left untroubled by too much inflection on the opera stage, here found the perfect partner in Bartoli’s careful delineation of the tragedies of L’Abbandano or Vaga Luna.

Add just enough Spanish spice — Rossini’s fevered Canzonetta spagnuola, manic ululating in Manuel García’s El Poeta — and you had the perfect programme, perfectly delivered. Book when she’s next in town. Whatever she’s singing.

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