It’s quite a stretch singing amid the floating acoustics of the 11th century Ely Cathedral with its marble floors and high vaulted ceiling to the warmly intimate concrete and glass of the 200-seater Utzon Room at Sydney Opera House, but it was all in a day’s work for leading UK Renaissance boy band Gesualdo Six.

Making their Sydney debut on a Sunday afternoon, with only the showery weather to remind them of home, the group under their director and bass singer Owain Park made an immediate impression with their faultless pitch, seamless entries and characterful blend of voices.

The Gesualdo Six in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan.

From behind the audience Thomas Tallis’s call and response Te lucis ante terminum, led by counter tenor Guy James, set the tone for the next 90 minutes of English motets from the Tudor period, written during a turbulent religious and political era.

Tallis served under four monarchs – Henry VIII, Mary I, Edward IV and Elizabeth I – and as a Catholic he had to tread carefully. His pupil William Byrd was also a Catholic and although they were...