Australia Chamber Orchestra | Cocteau’s Circle
November 17, 2025, Melbourne Recital Hall
The Occasion
A Monday night in the inventive and exploratory hands of Richard Tognetti and the ingenious ACO, Australia Chamber Orchestra. Having scaled the West face of Everest in ‘Mountain’ merely a fortnight ago, we have now migrated to the Melbourne Recital Centre, and set our Time Machine for the decadent cabaret period of Parisian charm in this Cocteau piece of music-theatre. Arriving in the same week that beloved septuagenarian rockers AC/DC pack the MCG, on the eve of the much-vaunted Ashes series, and amidst both the British and Jewish Film Festivals, and vying with French operatic maestro Bizet, over at the Regent, Tognetti and co. weave their Impressionistic Proustian magic on us in this deliciously formed program.
The Venue
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall is one of Melbourne’s great modern treasures: a luminous, shoebox-shaped chamber of hoop pine and golden warmth. Its acoustics, among the finest in the world, rest on steel springs that lift the room above the city’s hum. Every detail — timber panelling, sculpted surfaces, generous foyers — invites immersion. Here, silence feels sacred and music becomes light.
The Performers
Founded in 1975 by John Painter, the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) has evolved into one of Australia’s most distinguished musical exports. Since 1989, Richard Tognetti has served as Artistic Director, shaping the ensemble into a daring and distinctive force. What began as a small group rehearsing above a shop in Kings Cross now commands international stages, performing in world-class venues across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Known for its virtuosity, energy, and inventive programming, the ACO blends classical masterpieces with contemporary works, collaborations across art forms, and bold multimedia projects. In 2025, it celebrates its 50th anniversary, a milestone of creativity and excellence.
This program introduces the unique talents of Le Gateau Chocolat – Maître d’, Chloe Lankshear -Soprano, and is staged and directed by the ubiquitous and multi-talented Tognetti.
The Program
Featured works by Stravinsky, Gershwin, Ravel, Poulenc, Boulanger, Debussy, Milhaud, Piaf, specially created and ACO commissioned compositions by Elena Kats- Chernin, and others.
The Period of Cocteau and an Explosion of Creativity, Decadence and Impressionism
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) was a prolific and versatile French artist known for his avant-garde work across writing, filmmaking, and visual arts. His style blended myth with reality, creating surreal, dreamlike worlds in works like the film Beauty and the Beast and the novel Les Enfants Terribles. He was a central figure in 20th-century French culture, influencing movements like Surrealism and pioneering avant-garde cinema.
The thriving Soirée and cafe society, so profoundly and extensively depicted by Marcel Proust, was a fertile feeding ground for trailblazing luminaries such as:
- Igor Stravinsky – revolutionary Russian composer
- Ernest Hemingway – A prominent novelist
- F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald – The famous American writer/novelist and his troubled wife
- Gertrude Stein – The art collector and writer and facilitator
- Pablo Picasso – The influential Spanish painter, extraordinarily influential
- Salvador Dalí – The eccentric surrealist Spanish artist who redirected the trajectory of contemporary art
- Luis Buñuel – famous surreal artist
- Man Ray – surrealist artist
- Cole Porter – The composer and songwriter who is a major contributor to the Great American Songbook
- Josephine Baker – The famous dancer and entertainer, rejected by US and adopted by France
- Henri Matisse – The French artist is briefly seen
- T. S. Eliot – The poet and playwright is also briefly encountered
The Performance
It always bodes well when every member of an orchestra is visibly having a lot of fun playing for its audience and the revelry becomes audibly contagious in the form of gasps, sighs, whoops and energetic applause.
Cocteau’s Circle was just such an occasion – from the heightened expectations of venturing into the experimental unknown as the players trod onto the boards, to the raucous applause following every number and the emotional cries of encore at the bittersweet end.
The lead violinist Richard Tognetti – a.k.a. Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra – stroked, weaved, stabbed and conducted with his bow like he was fencing with the other 15 instruments.
The six-and-a-half feet tall, six-inch heeled Maitre d’ – who goes by the name of “Le Gateau Chocolate” and flouted several outrageously camp costume and wig changes in between acts – aroused the whole gamut of emotions as the deep-baritone storytelling
And as for the deliriously wonderful Australian soprano (currently based in Germany) Chloe Lankshear – who delivered every song with perfect French diction, plus vocal agility and breath control to die for – it just felt like both Piaff and Lotte Lenya were watching from the wings and egging her on to sing as stirringly as them in their heyday. Encore Chloe!
