The on Wings of Song Series Shows a Fledgling’s Flights

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At 19, the soprano Nadine Sierra is a seasoned performer. A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., she entered the Palm Beach Opera’s young artist program at 14 and made her stage debut there two years later. Her 2004 performance of Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” on the National Public Radio series “From the Top” generated a buzz. A video clip of Ms. Sierra singing that aria, posted on YouTube last year, has been viewed more than 11,700 times.

In July Ms. Sierra became the youngest singer ever to win the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award at the Music Academy of the West. Now in her second year of studies at Mannes College the New School for Music, she presented her award recital on Sunday afternoon in the quaint, intimate Christ and St. Stephen’s Church near Lincoln Center, in the second concert of the foundation’s On Wings of Song series.

Butterflies probably accounted for a few inaccuracies in “Ruhe sanft,” from Mozart’s opera “Zaide.” Ms. Sierra’s attractive, agile lyric soprano voice was minutely sharp in its highest range, and she sometimes lacked finesse in florid passages.

But her performance grew stronger. Ms. Sierra phrased German songs by Schumann, Brahms, Strauss and Schubert with elegance and confidence. Still more enticing was a group of French songs by Berlioz, Debussy and Poulenc. In the last, Poulenc’s “Chemins de l’amour,” she gracefully spun high notes from near silence to a hearty volume and back again.

Ms. Sierra’s German and French as yet seem less than lived in, but her Portuguese sounded impeccable in playful songs by Francisco Braga and a captivating account of Villa-

Lobos’s “Melodia Sentimental.” (Ms. Sierra’s mother happens to be Portuguese.)

This young singer will no doubt continue to polish her formidable technique. Already she possesses something that can hardly be taught: a commanding stage presence, complete with flashing eyes, a winning smile and unmannered gestures.

Ms. Sierra’s program ended with selections from the musical “Kismet,” and her well-earned encore was, yes, “O mio babbino caro.” Throughout, the pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson provided stylish, insightful playing that was admirable in its own right.