NCH, Dublin

IRISH SOPRANO Mary O’Sullivan proved a popular soloist at this week’s RTÉ Summer Lunchtime Concert, thanks to an outgoing stage manner and a glossy tone that comfortably exceeds two octaves.

These were the qualities that carried Nel grave tormentofrom Mozart's Mitridate and the Laughing Songfrom J Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, even though there may have been a blurry edge to some of the finer details.

O'Sullivan sharpened the emotional focus, however, in the waltz song Quando m'en vofrom Puccini's La Bohème, and matched uproarious aplomb with impressive precision in Glitter and Be Gayfrom Bernstein's Candide– one of the toughest of coloratura assignments.

It was in the accompanying of these two items that the RTÉ Concert Orchestra's principal conductor David Brophy best managed to get under the music's skin. Despite some polished solo string playing, the Intermezzofrom Puccini's Manon Lescautstruggled to establish a sense of expressive proportion.

Nor was one poor relation of the Vienna waltz, Strauss's Fledermaus Quadrille Op 363, helped by being presented as a disjointed sequence of dance movements without any real feeling of beginning, middle or end.

That said, the uplifting sound of the cocktail shaker was never far away in the Rhumbafrom Morton Gould's Latin-American Symphonette. And in Rossini's Semiramide Overture, Brophy's discreet leavening of interpretive innovation seemed neither more nor less than the score required.