I have seen Kanen Breen in some strange and compromising positions in various Opera Australia productions, but I have never, until now, seen him singing through what looks like a bikram yoga routine. Last week I was admitted into the last half-hour of a rehearsal for Handel’s Partenope before catching up with the production’s music director, English harpsichordist and conductor Christian Curnyn. It was here that I saw the Australian tenor contorting himself into an upside-down arch even as he fired off a pitch-perfect coloratura aria. I just hope there was a chiropractor waiting in the wings.

Even in this staged rehearsal sans orchestra – piano, harpsichord, theorbo and cello – the singing was so ravishing that Breen’s exotic poses didn’t distract from the music. I was lucky enough to sit in on the denouement of the final act, in which a duel is decreed between Arsace (a dapper, blue-suited Catherine Carby in the pants role) and Prince Eurimene (Jacqueline Dark), who is in fact Arsace’s jilted lover Rosmira in disguise. The cross-dressing of both performers and characters adds a layer of intrigue. A statuesque Queen Partenope (Emma Matthews) looks on. After...