Giants of the financial world and famed for more than two centuries as patrons of the arts (Mendelssohn and Chopin were among their many beneficiaries), the Rothschilds also nurtured an acclaimed musical talent of their own: soprano Charlotte de Rothschild.

A seventh-generation member of the family, de Rothschild, 46, is not only a professional classical singer, but one with a great love of Japanese songs. In performances earlier this month with pianist Masahiro Saito in Tokyo and Osaka, half of the 24 numbers she sang were do-yo (children's songs and nursery rhymes), including pieces by lyricist/poet Hakusyu Kitahara and composer Kosaku Yamada.

In fact, de Rothschild was the first non-Japanese to record an album of do-yo in the Japanese language. That album, "A Japanese Journey -- Nihon no Tabiji," was released in 1999.

"I'm attracted to the sheer beauty of the [do-yo] songs," says de Rothschild, who has toured Japan regularly over the past 10 years. "It's not just the songs, but the poems as well. I can't really explain, but there is some kind of magic in each of these songs."

Do-yo date back to the period immediately after the 1868 Meiji Restoration, when children's songs written using Western musical notation were introduced in schools by order of the Ministry of Education. Then, they were called shoka (songs for singing), and many were written by ministry officials. To stem this bureaucratic influence, Hakusyu and other artists started a movement to compose their own songs for children; they called them do-yo.

When de Rothschild sings traditional do-yo such as "Akatonbo (Red Dragonfly)," "Kono Michi (This Road)" and "Natsu no Omoide (Memories of Summer Days)," it's as if she's turning the pages of an old book, opening windows on warm and nostalgic scenes from the past. Part of the reason her voice manages to communicate the essence of each do-yo so well is that, as with all the songs in her repertoire, she has made sure to understand the words. So far, she has mastered songs in 15 different languages.

"I am always careful to know what I am singing about, whichever language it is," she says. "Language is diverse -- from Hebrew, Welsh, Korean and Japanese to Russian, Polish and Czech. So, I [always] find someone from each country of the language I am studying to help me learn [a] specific song."

Although she studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, from age 17 and went on to attend the Royal College of Music in London, as the daughter of Edmund de Rothschild, former chairman of bankers N.M. Rothschild and Sons, Charlotte worried that any fame she achieved would be due not to her talent but to her family name.

"After my years at college, I debated whether or not to change my name to see if I could make it as a singer," she says. "But in the end I decided to keep it.

"As the saying goes, 'If you can't beat them, join them.' So I decided to become my family's musical ambassador."

Her first album released in Japan, 1991's "Flowers, Dreams and Romance," was a collection of songs composed by one of her ancestors, Matilde de Rothschild. Ironically, it was while promoting the album here that she first experimented singing do-yo, which eventually helped her to establish herself outside the family.

"In some ways, Japanese songs were a gift, because they had no associations with the Rothschild family," she says. "In that respect, Japanese songs have helped me to be an artist in my own right."