Just a week after American tenor Michael Fabiano’s concert, the Melbourne Recital Centre once again hosted an opera singer of international renown. This time, however, the talent was homegrown: soprano Siobhan Stagg was born in Mildura and studied in Melbourne.

Based in Berlin for the past decade, and performing to acclaim at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Lyric Opera of Chicago among others, she sings in Australia infrequently these days. This one-off recital was a welcome homecoming.

Accompanied by pianist Timothy Young, who is also a soloist, chamber musician and a founding member of Ensemble Liaison, Stagg showcased the agility, expressiveness and beauty of her voice with a program of art songs.

Siobhan Stagg. Photo supplied.

Wearing an elegant midnight-blue halterneck gown, she also revealed refined French diction from the outset with six songs by Henri Duparc. This romantically melancholic music, with text by the likes of Baudelaire and Goethe, was sensitively interpreted.

Highlights included Au pays où se fait la guerre (To the land where a war is waged), which Stagg added to her concert program a year ago in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Her...