Can there be a better venue for a Soviet pop music nostalgia trip than the Kremlin Palace concert hall? This monolith in Ural marble and glass ought by rights to be as defacing of the surrounding candy-striped and gold onion domes as a hairy wart on a baby's cheek. By a miracle it fits blandly in.
For some reason we are taken through the artists' entrance. We thread our way between fiddlers and cellists. Our guide is greeted warmly by a beaming, stocky man whom we later clock as the night's conductor, Constantin Orbelian.
The last door, if open, will allow us to creep discreetly to our seats. It is locked and no one can find the key. Cripes! The show is supposed to start in less than two minutes. Are we really going to be taken across the stage? Da, yes, it seems that we are.
Not everyone gets their first glimpse of a 6,000 seater auditorium from roughly the spot where the evening's star is shortly going to be belting forth. Such moments really ought to be savoured and not wasted in self-chastisement about one's unpolished shoes, which do not - under a million lumens of spotlight - look their very best.
Nor does one really want to get off on the wrong foot with the world's biggest roadies. Nothing more irks a pumped-up shaven-headed man in Crombie and earpiece, standing hands clasped across crotch scanning 5,998 faces for signs of trouble, than to be taken by surprise from the rear by the last two members of the audience.
With relief we reach our seats. Though this vast hall has not housed a full congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in yonks, you still feel more of a delegate than an audience member. It's partly the high-backed chairs, partly the holes in the seats in front which were presumably for headphones ,and partly the ashtrays. Sitting through one of those ghastly jamborees would have turned anyone to chain-smoking.
There are all ages in the audience, with as many teenage girls as babushkas. What unites them, apart from a manifest adoration of Dmitri Hvorostovsky, is a delight in dressing up. There are some wonderfully adventurous outfits and hair.
The adoration does not show at once. Sure, the world-renowned baritone is enthusiastically applauded for his assorted Tchaikovsky operatic arias from Eugene Onegin and the Queen of Spades. But it's the second half of the gig that really grabs them, from stalls to upper circle. Here, with the assistance of a double microphone, he shivers the glass roof with pop songs from the 70s and 80s.
Pop is a broad label. If the first two hits, by the composer Alexandra Pakhmutova - Tenderness and How Young We Were - are representative of what rocked the Soviets, the Iron Curtain was even more effective at keeping out western sounds than we imagined.
Nearly a generation of MTV has failed to diminish the Russian love for this music. Barely have the balalaikas stopped fluttering on these numbers than women of all ages are scurrying down the aisles with flower bouquets. The roadies make no attempt to stop them. Don't they know the damage all that collective pollen could do to the vocal chords?
With grace, their idol accepts the floral gifts, bending down to shake every donor's hand. He even waits patiently while some of the less nippy ladies trundle down the long passages.
These pieces, unashamed tear-jerkers dripping with sentiment, he sings with utter conviction, even the gooiest. On the whole, opera singers performing off-repertoire with microphones can never quite shake off the uncomfortable impression that they are slumming it. Not this man. He respects and feels this music, so familiar from his childhood.
Smiling broadly under those distinctive silver locks, he walks with slow dignity back for three encores: Moscow Nights, Dark Eyes, and Fatherland. What a performance!
Tonight he does it all again at London's Barbican, with orchestra, balalaikas, accordion and backing singers.
• Listen to Peter Kingston's interview with Dmitri Hvorostovsky (mp3)
