Chaliapin, Kipnis, Christoff, Ghiaurov, Hvorostovsky. The lineage of great Eastern European male singers in the West remains unbroken, continuing this day with Dmitri Hvorostovsky. But Mr. Hvorostovsky is a bit different than his predecessors. Although he does sometimes challenge himself (with mixed results) to plumb the lower depths of his tessitura, he is that rare bird of paradise, a natural baritone. When unforced and relaxed, he is as good a singer as appears on any modern stage. A sold-out crowd at Avery Fisher Hall heard him traverse 200 years of Russian music from the sacred to the profane.

This concert was very well engineered, a savvy way of preserving that glorious instrument without compromising its integrity. The silver fox appeared with several different musical groups and in many disparate combinations. The scribblings on my program notes looked like a baseball scorecard by evening’s end.

The first quarter of the night was devoted to sacred music. The exceptional young singers of the Academy of Choral Art, under the direction of Victor Popov, presented a brief survey of liturgical Russia from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Mr. Hvorostovsky was the soloist in some of these pieces, allowing his rich, silky voice to warm up without undue strain. Most interesting were the rather dissonant “Symbol of Faith” by Alexander Arkhangel’sky and the otherworldly “Let My Prayer Be Set Forth in Thy Sight” by Pavel Chesnokov, with an astounding doubling of Mr. Hvorostovsky’s lush middle register with one solo bass voice two octaves below.

Next came Russian opera highlights. After an impassioned Gryaznoy’s “Aria” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Tsar’s Bride,” Mr. Hvorostovsky settled into two of his specialties, accompanied by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra with Constantine Orbelian at the helm. Pushkin’s original story for “Pique Dame” was a simple enough affair, but the Tchaikovsky brothers made it much more complex by rendering heroic the character of Herman. Thus Prince Yeletsky, the inconvenient fiancé, is all the more poignant in the opera when we realize how truly deep is his love for Lisa. Mr. Hvorostovsky is expert in this showstopper, even including, if not quite a Caruso sob, an awfully affecting catch in the throat near the aria’s conclusion. In his bit from “Eugene Onegin,” “You Wrote to Me,” he dazzled with exquisite quietude. Everything was audible, but nothing overplayed.

Unbuttoned but not unplugged, Mr. Hvorostovsky sang the second half of the evening with both an open shirt and a microphone. Joining both chorus and orchestra were three members of a folk instrument group called Style of Five, adding the flavor of the tundra to what was essentially a pop set.

From this point on, there were two separate, simultaneous concerts. To the uninitiated ear, several of these World War II-era songs sounded remarkably similar, the music swelling in exactly the same place, the martial rhythm becoming more pronounced before a big finale often leading to the singer ending with arms outstretched. But to the 25% or so of folks in attendance who were of Russian heritage, this was mother’s milk, as evidenced by their applause after a few measures of each song’s instrumental introductions. It seemed no one could possibly sing these songs more convincingly than Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

The printed program ended with some ditties from the 1970s and ’80s that must be classified as an acquired taste. They employed such clichés as arpeggiated piano introductions and vocalise from the chorus, but people seemed to love them unconditionally. If Dmitri Hvorostovsky ever gets tired of serious music, there are many stadiums around the world that would welcome his conversion to such treacle.