The Perth-born singer played a raunchy, bisexual Don Giovanni in London.

Perth baritone Duncan Rock has won the inaugural Chilcott Award for young UK-based opera singers. Named in memory of the soprano Susan Chilcott, who died from cancer in 2003, the biennial award bestows £10,000 on a “major young artist with the potential to make an international impact”.

It seems the 28-year-old barihunk has done just that since receiving the Australian Singing Competition’s $30,000 prize from the late Dame Joan Sutherland in 2006. In a recent gender-bending production of Mozart staged at London gay nightclub Heaven, he was billed as “a Don Giovanni who makes the Catalogue aria believable”.

Since completing his studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London, the former WAAPA student has sung the same role with Welsh National Opera, as well as Mercurio in L’Incoronazione di Poppea for Glyndebourne and Papageno for English National Opera, in a production of The Magic Flute that opened this week. In 2010 he was winner of Glyndebourne’s prestigious John Christie Award for singers.

Rock plans to use the Chilcott prize money on lessons with Robert Dean over two years, language tuition in French and German, travel expenses for international auditions...