Television should grab opera diva Maria Ewing by the scruff of her beautiful neck and give her a series exploring the American popular song.

Lately, she has been exchanging her opera hat for one exploring the work of the great songwriters; songs by such giants as George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, Jimmy Van Heusen and many others.

And superbly good at it she is, too. At Chichester last Sunday, she donned a black, sequinned, halter-necked cocktail dress, surrounded herself with two guitarists and a piano and swung her way through two hours of non-stop great songs.

And she has done her research well, preceding each piece with an anecdote about the song's creation or its writer and don't forget, Mr TV producer, Ms Ewing has gamine great looks too.

Thanks to her operatic training, this is a jazz and Broadway singer who has just the right phrasing. She can hold a note strong and true and she is of a certain age to have lived a lot of these songs.

Hear her sing The Shadow Of Your Smile and shivers raise the hairs, when she sings Stephen Sondheim's Losing My Mind, your whole body goes cold with its intensity.

She can be kittenish as when she sings I Love A Piano, dramatic in Kurt Weill's Surabaya Johnny and a superb actress in another Sondheim hit, Broadway Baby.

And for Ms Ewing, this is not crossover stuff. She drank in these songs as a youngster and now delivers them with maturity, sureness and a knowledge that these are the truly great songs of our lives.