American soprano Renée Fleming, reigning queen of the opera world, mixed huge vocal talents with down-to-earth charm to bewitch Roy Thomson Hall on April 21. .

Delving into the tonally slippery world of art song in early 20th century Vienna, France and contemporary America, Fleming sang of love, loss and enchantment, turning each piece in a miniature operatic tale.

The singer lightened up the stark mood conjured by her formal gown, accompanist Hartmut Höll’s white tie and tails, and the forbiddingly empty stage by providing spoken introductions to each set of songs.

Three composers with tight personal, thematic and compositional connections within the old Austro-Hungarian Empire opened the program.

Inadvertently foreshadowing the upcoming opening of Alexander Zemlinsky’s opera, A Florentine Tragedy, by the Canadian Opera Company, Fleming presented a set of five songs by him that traced the outlines of a failed relationship.

Two songs by Zemlinsky’s close friend Arnold Schoenberg included the early “Erwartung” (Anticipation), where desire gradually grew on a waft of slippery, lush harmonies.

The whole recital, which then veered from the equally lush music of Erich Korngold to the melodies of Henri Duparc, was an elaborate excuse for Fleming to unfurl her magical way with a musical turn of phrase and ability to shade individual vowels in a remarkable range of colours.

Here was an artist in full command of her voice as well as the music itself. If, at times, Fleming’s diction faltered a little bit, it at least was done in the service of grace.

The soprano really tested herself with “Deux sonnets de Jean Cassou,” two songs originally written in the mid-1950s for baritone by French composer Henri Dutilleux.

Despite being fiercely difficult and modern, both Fleming and Höll burnished the score into a melancholy magnificence, before crowning the official programme with “Night Flight to San Francisco,” a musical setting by American composer Ricky Ian Gordon inspired by Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

Throughout, Höll was the ideal English-butler accompanist — being exactly in the right place, at the right volume, every time.

His piano, a Steingraeber & Söhne grand specially brought in for the concert, was a remarkable presence of its own, its clear, dark tones an inspired complement to some very serious — and very satisfying — musicmaking.