Australian countertenor Maximilian (Max) Riebl, whose many credits including performing with Pinchgut Opera and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, has died of cancer, aged just 30.

The ethereally voiced singer was born in Melbourne on 26 June, 1991 into a musical family. His Austrian father Luis is a psychoanalyst but Luis’s brother Thomas is a viola player and music professor in Vienna. Max’s older brother Felix Riebl started jazz/funk band The Cat Empire in 1999, while he was a teenager, and his sister Rose Riebl is a pianist, singer and composer.

Max Riebl.

Since news of his death broke, there has been an outpouring of emotion on social media with Erin Helyard, the Artistic Director of Pinchgut Opera, describing  him as “a singer of translucent, burnished tone and vivid, athletic coloratura” and “a gentle man who was thoughtful and calm”, while Mitchell Butel, who directed him in Pinchgut’s production of The Loves of Apollo & Dafne, said he was “as charming and as gorgeous as any fairytale prince” and “a prince of a human being too”.

Riebl played trumpet as a child, making his performance debut with The Cat Empire at age...