For someone used to treading the boards at the London Coliseum, the Royal Opera House and the like, Mary Plazas looked very much at home in the humbler setting of St Peter’s Church on Saturday night. Not surprising, perhaps; she was born just down the road, in Cholsey, and there were undoubtedly people in the audience who remembered her as a youngster and witnessed her meteoric rise to operatic stardom.

The friend who accompanied me to the concert recalled a 15-year-old Mary stunning the judges at the North Berks Festival with her incredibly mature voice. Nearly 30 years later, she still has that power to electrify her audiences.

What really impresses with Mary Plazas is that she doesn’t seem to have any weaknesses; she is uniformly excellent, whether throwing herself passionately into Fiordiligi’s aria Per pieta, ben mio, perdona from the second act of Cosi Fan Tutte, or having a bit of fun with Cathy Berberian’s bizarre but strangely mesmerising Stripsody.

The rich beauty of her voice was perhaps shown off to best advantage in some of the more exquisite numbers, such as the Schumann and Schubert lieder, which took up most of the first half, and Quilter’s settings of poems by Blake and Shelley. But she also demonstrated her versatility with a selection of songs by De Falla, in which she captured the character of the songs to perfection — possibly inspired by her own Spanish connections.

For Schubert’s delightful Der Hirt aus dem Felson (The shepherd on the rock), Mary was joined by Wallingford schoolboy Jack Ventress, whose sublime clarinet playing, interweaving effortlessly with the solo voice, announced the arrival of another star in the making. There was never a feeling that here was a professional singer pitted against an inexperienced player; the two gelled as equals.

Pianist Caroline Dowdle accompanied sensitively throughout, and enjoyed her own moment in the spotlight with a dreamy rendition of Chopin’s Berceuse.