Platée, first performed in 1745 at Versailles, presents challenges that would have daunted less robust and ambitious companies than Pinchgut Opera, which had planned to present the work as the highlight of its twentieth-anniversary season – a milestone scuppered, like so many things, by the omnipresent virus.

In order to prove to the furious Juno that her jealousy is groundless, Mercury and Cithéron devise a plot to convince the grotesque water nymph Platée that Jupiter is madly in love with her. A wedding is planned between the pair, but Juno, taking one look at the would-be bride, forestalls it, realising that the joke is on her. Juno then reconciles with her husband.

Platée is described as a comédie lyrique with ballet bouffon, and the ballet music throughout is an undoubted highlight of the piece. Just how director Neil Armfield was going to present this on the City Recital Hall’s tiny stage with no professional dancers was intriguing. Moreover, the cruelty with which the lead character is treated has stuck in the craw of many, from Voltaire onwards. In his biography of Rameau, Cuthbert Girdlestone makes the case: ‘A work built on so heartless a theme … is bound … to exert a very limited attraction.’

Much of the ballet music has been cut, but Armfield solves the remaining ballet problem with great ingenuity. He has the chorus – Cantillation in terrific voice – and members of the orchestra gamely bounding around the stage without bumping into the furniture or one another. Armfield also – miracle of miracles – uses video effectively and wittily, not to overwhelm the performance but to enhance it.

As for the piece’s problematic subject matter, Armfield has for the most part decided to ignore the darker aspects and present it primarily as a romp. Any references to our self-obsessed era in which beauty equals success are fleeting at best.

The wedding theme is predominant. Entering the theatre, we are confronted by the detritus of what appears to have been a riotous ceremony overshadowed by a sign congratulating Cheryl Barker and Peter Coleman-Wright, the renowned operatic couple who play Juno and Jupiter. A wedding cake has a starring role. Apparently, the audience in Versailles was shocked by the grossness of the performance, so some licentiousness was to be expected here, but Armfield rather overdoes the groping. Orgies are notoriously difficult to stage. Usually, ‘less is more’ is the best rule.

Musically, we were in the safe hands of Erin Helyard. He propels the piece with great energy but knows when to relax into the gloriously lyrical moments that Rameau positions throughout the score.

Pinchgut have fielded an all-Australian cast, helped by the fact that Opera Australia seems so averse to employing many of our talented singers. As a party-loving Satyr, Adrian Tamburini’s resonant bass got us off to a flying start, and he was able to make his mark in the rather thankless role of King Cithéron. Mercury is a speedy, agile god and Nicholas Jones certainly lived up to that reputation. None of his energetic acrobatics impeded his singing and he was especially effective in his other role, in the beautiful music Rameau gives to Thespis in the prologue.

Amy Moore, Cathy Di Zhang, Nicholas Jones, and David Greco in Platée (photograph by Brett Boardman).

Coleman-Wright is no stranger to flamboyance, which he proved by his swaggering entrance. His Jupiter was suitably regal, but also mellow enough to join in the fun. Juno may not be a big role, but Cheryl Barker more than made her presence felt. Here was a lady you wouldn’t want to mess with.

Cathy-Di Zhang is obviously a young singer with enormous promise, but on this occasion that promise was only partly fulfilled. As L’Amour, she sang beautifully and was a strong stage presence, but her La Folie was a little under-powered both dramatically and musically. She wasn’t helped by the staging. La Folie’s big scena is a highlight of the opera, and she should dominate the stage completely. But Armfield had her more or less shackled to a table, on which she had to crawl around face down when singing the most demanding and showy section of her aria. What when performed to its full effect should stop the show cold was greeted here with warm but not ecstatic applause.

It has been said that Platée is the only fully realised character in the opera, and the water nymph has often been played for pathos. But in Armfield’s conception, Platée is less nymph than drag queen, and her ambience is less swamp than Oxford Street. Given this concept, Armfield sensibly gave Kanen Breen free rein, which the tenor, not known as a shrinking violet, has seized on. Stomping around in the highest of heels – one hopes he has a good masseur – he towers over the rest of the cast. For most of the opera we are conditioned to see him as a figure of fun; it is a tribute to Breen’s dramatic ability that in the final stages of the opera, when Platée has been totally humiliated and the chorus is jeering at him, he manages to make her a moving desolate figure.

Pinchgut’s anniversary production may have come late, but, reservations aside, it is a fitting celebration.

Platée (Pinchgut Opera) is being performed at City Recital Hall, Sydney, until 8 December 2021. Performance attended: 1 December.