A sense of relief rippled through Hyde Park when Stevie Nicks made it on to the stage. After postponing two shows due to a leg injury and subsequent surgery that her statement insisted was minor earlier in the week, it was hard to believe the show would go ahead. But here she was, resplendent in all black, that shock of curly blonde hair framing sharp eyes that peered out through a layer of dark kohl.

The magic came on slowly, sputtering through a shaky start. Her first song – “Outside the Rain” – was a little worrying; she seemed to slur her way through it and made the line “Words don’t matter/They don’t matter at all” seem unfortunate and prescient. But as the song segued into Fleetwood Mac fave “Dreams” and the video screens shocked from black and white to screaming colour, Nicks seemed to come alive too.

As you would expect from a septuagenarian recovering from a surgical procedure, she wasn’t exactly leaping around the stage but tapping the beat on her hips, shimmying a little and giving us the occasional twirl with all the glee of a six year old was enough to reassure the watching fans: she had this.

Hyde Park has never seen such a coven: London’s women had dug out their blackest tulle and tiniest top hats to worship at the altar of Nicks. As the sun dropped and twilight fell, a waxing crescent moon hung over the park as if even the cosmos had turned out to see her.

Nicks’ distinctive, throaty voice required little back-up, powering through “Gypsy” like it was 1982 and absolutely belting out a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’”. She dedicated the song to Petty, who she last saw in this very park before he died in 2017 – she performed before him on the BST billing. “I feel his presence and I know he’s with us,” she said, and as she closed her eyes to sing each of those huge, wing-stretching choruses, you could sense her channelling his energy.

Nicks loves to yap between songs – long, winding backstories about how “For What It’s Worth” was never meant to be a political song but she’s decided that it is now and about her various capes that she thought no one would be interested in, but it turns out we were interested, and very. Each time she re-emerged draped in a different cape we were thrilled, and each was more magical and sparkle-decked than the one before. During the instrumental bit of “Stand Back”, she swished the gold number she was in around, smiling beatifically as she did. “This cape has been mended many times,” she drawled. “It’s still standing. This and Elton.”

There were no fireworks, no confetti cannons, nothing as gauche or mundane as a cheap trick to shortcut us to emotion: all the magic was real and it all came from her. As the light fell, Nicks seemed to glow brighter on the stage. Her band were excellent, grooving gloriously during her multiple disappearances from stage, giving us intros so long and tantalising that we thought we might die before the meat of songs like “Edge of Seventeen” burst open over us.

When Harry Styles strolled casually onto the stage for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, it took a moment for his presence to dawn but a ripple of screams soon punctuated the air. In July 2017, Nicks had performed this song with Petty and it turned out to be their last performance together.

Grief was the theme of the encore: Nicks and Styles followed up “Draggin’” with a gorgeously devastating duet of “Landslide”, dedicated to the late Christine McVie whose birthday it was that day. Nicks sang looking at Styles, her gaze fixed not with the soul-annihilating fury of the viral “Silver Springs” clip, but with a sort of tender intensity that did still make you think you wouldn’t mess with Nicks when she’s in her feels.

The show ended not with a belter or even with a song: it ended with a simple acknowledgement of the mystical realm she enters when she stands on a stage and sings with thousands of people. “It’s taken me all this time to try to deal with this situation,” Nicks said of the loss of her best friend, her voice shaking just a little. “My mom would say when I was little, when I was hurt, I would run to the stage – so that’s what I’ve done. It’s all I can do to get over this. You’ve made me better and I want you to know how much I appreciate that. I thank you, Harry thanks you. And so we go on.” They bowed. They waved. And they turned and went on.