This added up to an odd, and rather unsatisfactory, evening. It was billed as part of the “International Voices” series at the South Bank, but the international voice did not make an appearance until after the interval, much like a dinner party at which the hostess arrives in time for dessert.

More strangely still, the first half was given over to a performance of excerpts from Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet by Charles Dutoit and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This was the second occasion this year when the piece has been played by the same conductor and orchestra in the same kind of celebrity programme, a distinct case of déjà entendu. The orchestral playing was better this time – an extra rehearsal had done the trick – though Dutoit’s red-blooded performance still lacked the last degree of finesse.

More Russian music followed. Making her belated entrance, Renée Fleming looked every inch the glamorous star opera singer, even if her choice of Tatyana’s Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was not obvious prima donna territory. In theory, the role lies on the low side for her, but in practice there was much lambently beautiful singing. She also made a palpable attempt to connect with the character, even if Pushkin’s young heroine remains a generation away in age and a continent away in language and culture. After that, Dutoit and the RPO took centre stage for another Russian retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story, Tchaikovsky’s this time, red-blooded in its performance like the Prokofiev earlier.

When Fleming returned for a selection of Italian opera arias, the audience was ready to settle in for the main event of the evening. But in no time at all it was all over: two fleeting ditties from Leoncavallo’s La Bohème, a nebulous slow reverie from Giordano’s Siberia, floated on the lightest breath of air, and a single, substantial nugget of Italian verismo drama in “Sola, perduta, abbandonata” from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, giving a glimpse of Fleming’s ever-lovely soprano at full throttle. There was the shortest possible encore – “O mio babbino caro”, drawn out for an additional 30 seconds by a thick, soupy tempo – and then she was gone.