This paper examines performance, display and exhibition in the professional studies component of our teacher education programs at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Over three years from 2002 our students have assembled a repertoire of devices for thinking about themselves becoming teachers. Among other things, they have created operas in which the transformation of personal and professional identity is a key theme. Drawing on contemporary forms of qualitative research such as performance ethnography (McCall, 2000), autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Ellis & Flaherty, 1992) and using narrative and writing as forms of inquiry (Richardson, 1990; 1992; 1995a; 1995b; 1997; 1999; 2000), this research project constructs a 'learning through' (Gardner, 1983; 1993; 1995; 1999; 2003a; 2003b) approach to curriculum within pre-service teacher education. During 2002 we initiated the first curriculum opera (Dixon & White, 2003; Dixon, White, & Smerdon, 2003) in our Faculty of Education with thirty-seven students. In 2003 we developed this learning and teaching approach with twice as many students and, in 2004, one hundred and twenty students chose to join the opera. As students increasingly took control, they 'imagined curriculum' (Doll & Gough, 2002) and transformed their exploration of identity in the 'process of becoming' teachers (Britzman, 2003). In critiquing our teaching and learning practice in 2002, we used four stages of action research outlined by Arthur, Gordon and Butterfield (2003): 'pondering', 'planning', 'putting in a strategy' and 'pulling back to refine your initiative' (p. 212) as a theoretical framework. In 2003 we developed a more reflexive (Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000; Smyth & Shacklock, 1998) teaching approach and in so doing distanced this project from action research. In 2004 the students took even more control as producers and artists. The opera included digitized images, cultural critiques and pointed and highly professional criticism of government initiatives. This most recent cohort included mathematicians, scientists, dancers, musicians and ICT specialists. It also, somewhat surprisingly, attracted half of the international students. This process has challenged the shape of teacher education classrooms. Some methodological considerations and implications regarding this shift are taken up later in this paper. During the making of the opera, the students 'imagined' curriculum. In their curriculum 'imagining', the operatic chorus critiqued current mandated and outcomes-based programs and constraints. The operatic dancers worked through curriculum tensions as they juxtaposed contemporary dance with haka and ballet. They 'reconceptualize[d] the nature of curriculum to see it not in terms of plans preset or ideologies advocated, but as an image hovering over the process of education' (Doll & Gough, 2002). Based on Maori ceremonial posture dance with vocal accompaniments