The Canadian mezzo Wallis Giunta arrives with an excellent pedigree – prizes at both Juilliard and the Met and as last year’s winner as Young Singer of the Year at the International Opera Awards. Her reputation is rising quickly, and she has the goods on which to base a highly successful international career. In this recital for State Opera South Australia, Giunta explained that she had selected material thematically – centred on motherhood and the relationship between mother and child on both and a secular and religious level – and from a wide variety of musical genres, including alt-country, introspective folk, art song and opera. In doing so, she was able to show off her admirable technique but with such a wide range of material (which varied from folk and country to Broadway, opera and art song) it became hard to pull the whole recital together as a single entity. When it came to art song, the audience were generally treated to two song excerpts which made it harder to concentrate as Giunta went from Barber and Brahms to Joni Mitchell and Stephen Sondheim.

Wallis Giunta and Philip Mayers. Photo supplied

Musically the...