Massive stacks of loudspeakers, two giant screens, and a big covered stage: it looked like the setting for a pop concert. And pop concert is a good description of the first of Christ Church's Jubilee Concerts in Tom Quad, for there are few more popular, or better-known, classical singers than Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. True, Christ Church must have hoped to see more of the literally thousands of available seats occupied, but that was surely down to the weather — no actual rain, but a strong, bitingly cold, wind.

This was not an occasion for musical delicacy, as conductor Julian Reynolds demonstrated when he launched the BBC Concert Orchestra into Korngold’s Sea Hawk overture. This swashbuckling, broad-brush music was just the stuff for an open-air concert, as were performances of Christ Church alumnus William Walton’s Henry V: Charge and Battle, and Bernstein’s Candide overture later.

“Can she still hack it?” was my question about Dame Kiri as I approached this concert. Beginning with Mozart’s aria Vado, ma dove?, her tone was firm, with her ability to hold a line very clear. “The microphone has moved, is that OK?" she asked before moving on to Puccini. The wind had indeed begun to cause problems, with the conductor’s music blowing off its stand at one point, and alien growling sounds coming through the loudspeakers. Here Dame Kiri showed her consummate professionalism: the question to the sound engineer answered, she instantly switched into Cio-Cio-San’s plight in Madam Butterfly, even bringing an intimate feeling into the huge expanses of Tom Quad.

There was intimacy, too, in a delightful rendering of Baïlèro from Chants d’Auvergne, while music by Ginastera and Gershwin served to show the breadth of Dame Kiri’s range. “Thank you for enduring this wonderful evening,” she laughed at the end. Somehow that said it all.