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There's something genuinely arresting about Jackie Evancho, the tweener crossover vocalist who has become a sensation through her appearances on YouTube and "America's Got Talent". As her Monday night performance in Davies Symphony Hall revealed, she actually does have talent - if you define that as the ability to do something other people can't.

What Evancho has going for her is a rich, throaty alto of astonishing heft, which emerges from her tiny frame like evidence of some benign possession. Close your eyes, and you'd swear you were listening to a fully adult chanteuse; open them again, and there's a pint-size blond moppet, with the physical presence and mannerisms appropriate to her age (nearly 12).

That's what makes Evancho utterly unlike Charlotte Church, the young Welsh singer who was the last child to come down the classical crossover path. Church had the pure, piping soprano of the little girl she was, whereas Evancho seems to have had some kind of improbable vocal transplant.

The resulting display is an impressive thing to witness, and Evancho's technical precision and enormous range only serve to make it seem less fluky. The girl can sing - which is not to suggest that Monday's performance was a very satisfying musical experience.

For one thing, Evancho basically just has the one string to her bow. Appearing with an orchestra, she sang a little opera (Puccini's "O mio babbino caro"), some Broadway music ("The Impossible Dream") and a collection of profoundly forgettable pop ballads in English, French and Italian.

The evening's one real highlight was an unmannered and perfectly lovely account of the Disney standard "When You Wish Upon a Star." But otherwise, every selection sounded alike, shaped without spontaneity or flavor (the evening's most charmingly unscripted moment came when Evancho mistakenly entered during an orchestral number, then giggled and rushed back offstage). Her phrasing was often stiff, and her husky tone made lyrics difficult to discern.

The explanation for this should be perfectly obvious - uncanny vocal endowment or no, Evancho is a child, for Pete's sake. There's no reasonable way to expect her to also be an artist, and anyone who does is doing her no service.

I could understand the presence of children in the audience for Monday's show - they might as well have been there as at a Jonas Brothers concert - but the profusion of adults was harder to fathom. To watch the star-making apparatus go to work on this perky girl was all too evocative of "Toddlers and Tiaras" and other such unsavory endeavors.