In the late 1940s, Barry Humphries, then a teenager, bought on a whim a collection of sheet music, once owned by a refugee from Nazi Germany, from a secondhand bookshop in Melbourne. It consisted of works by composers banned in the Third Reich as “degenerate”, among them Korngold, Ernst Krenek and Kurt Weill, and though Humphries couldn’t read a score, his desire to unlock the secrets of the printed page resulted in a lifelong fascination with music of the Weimar Republic, with its experimentalism, defiance and unique mix of classical and jazz.

It's a mesmerising, touching, deeply humane evening

Decades later, Humphries is touring the UK with a Weimar Cabaret of his own, acting as conférencier, while Meow Meow sings and the Australian Chamber Orchestra is directed from the leader’s chair by Richard Tognetti.

“Heavily disguised as no one but myself,” as Humphries puts it, he tells us the tale of his own relationship with the music he cares for so much, and it’s quite a story. In 1951, he set about ordering the first cast recording of The Threepenny Opera from London, and what he heard changed his life. In the 60s he was researching “Entartete Musik” in Viennese libraries, long before musicological interest in the subject gained ground. He went to California to meet Krenek with a view to directing the Australian première of his opera Jonny Spielt Auf (it didn’t happen, sadly), while Mischa Spoliansky, whom he tracked down in London, became a close friend. Spoliansky’s songs put the young Marlene Dietrich on the map: one’s mind boggles at the thought of Humphries considering commissioning a piece from him for “my dear friend Dame Edna”.

Barry Humphries at Cadogan Hall, London. Photograph: Lloyd Jones/AAP

The music that illustrates this narrative is pointedly sardonic, often very sexual, and wonderfully done. Slinking round the stage in her familiar corsetry, Meow Meow gives us Weill standards like Surabaya Johnny and Pirate Jenny, along with rarities like Erwin Schulhoff’s extraordinary Sonata Erotica for solo soprano – a simulated female orgasm that makes Meg Ryan’s famous episode in When Harry Met Sally seem staid. Satu Vänskä, one of the ACO violinists, turns vocalist to join her for Wenn Die Beste Freundin, Spoliansky’s glorious lesbian duet, written for Dietrich and Margo Lion. Vänskä later gives us Friedrich Hollaender’s Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte on her own and should consider a career as a singer, if she ever gives up the violin.



Raffish in suits and trilbies, the ACO are outstanding. Sinewy woodwind lines hover in the air in Hindemith’s Kammermusik No 1, while Wilhelm Grosz’s Jazzband crackles with electricity. Tognetti proves the ideal bandleader, with his poise and grace. Towards the end of the evening, he plays an arrangement of Weill’s Youkali, written during his Parisian exile. The mood darkens as we’re reminded that those composers who survived Nazism – many did not – found their lives and careers changed beyond recognition. It’s a mesmerising, touching, deeply humane evening. Try not to miss it.