by on

Photo: Getty images

Publication: Evening Standard
By: SOPHIA SLEIGH
Tuesday 1 May 2018

Former West End star Ute Lemper is returning to London to perform songs written in concentration camps.

The star, 54, who won an Olivier award in 1998 for her role as Velma Kelly in Chicago, will sing songs in Yiddish written by people persecuted during the Holocaust.

Lemper, who was born in Germany to a Catholic family, made her name singing cabaret songs from the permissive Weimar Republic era, including some by Jewish composers who later fled the Nazis or became their victims.

She said: “I felt it was my mission to tell the story of those who were on the other side of the barbed wire. Thirty years ago I started singing the music that was banned by the Nazis.

“Those composers had to emigrate in the Thirties and there is the other side of the story — those who didn’t get out. It’s a personal mission to close the circle. It’s a very different concert. It’s a memorial concert reminding us of a difficult and complicated past.”

She feels the concert in West Hampstead, Songs For Eternity, is timely amid concerns that anti-Semitism is growing. “It’s everywhere — in Germany too there is an uprising in anti-semitism and we see it in France,” she said.

“It grows stronger and I find it absolutely appalling. People are still looking for the black sheep. It is certainly a good time to bring this concert to people.”

Songs For Eternity is at JW3 Finchley Road on May 22 at 7:30pm. Tickets are £28.

Click here to read on the Evening Standard’s website

by on

It was inspiring to be on the jury for the Glenn Gould Award. A wonderful group of artists including Viggo Mortensen, Francois Girard, Sondra Radvanovsky, Howard Shore, Foday Suso, Ye Xiaogang, Naeemeh Naeemaei and Judge Mclachlin. I am so glad we chose the unique Jessye Norman!

by on

Publication: Frankfurter Rundschau
Date: 12 April, 2018
By: Thomas Stillbauer


„Die Menschen sind kurzsichtig und egoistisch und unverantwortlich“, sagt Ute Lemper. Auch deswegen singt sie auf der Bühne die Lieder für die Ewigkeit.  (Pic : XAVI TORRENT/GETTY)

Chanson-Star Ute Lemper singt und bewahrt Lieder, die in Konzentrationslagern geschrieben wurden. Im Interview erklärt sie, warum es heute wichtig ist, diese Musik aufzuführen, und ob es hilft, zu singen statt zu weinen…

Click here to read the whole article in pdf format.

by on

by: Fern Siegel
Traveler’s USA Notebook

Photo by David Andrako

It’s fitting that the divine Ute Lemper’s latest cabaret show is Rendezvous With Marlene, as she shares several key traits with Hollywood legend Marlene Dietrich. Both are captivating performers who harbored conflicted feelings about Germany, their birthplace.

And both are strong, sultry, alluring women with singular careers.

Thus, in the elegant Café Carlyle through March 3, Lemper, acclaimed internationally as an actress and singer, pays an emotional musical tribute to Dietrich, one of the stars of the Weimar. (Lemper made a name for herself singing the Weimar repertoire.)

What makes the show so touching is its poignant undertow. Dietrich was a savvy artist. She understood how to craft a glamorous, exotic public persona, noting that a carefully constructed illusion could sustain a lucrative private reality.

Rendezvous With Marlene is inspired by a phone call between the two in 1988. Dietrich was living as a recluse in Paris; Lemper had just received the Molière Award for Cabaret. Dietrich became a star in 1928, thanks to The Blue Angel. Six days before Lemper played the same role 64 years later in Berlin, Dietrich died.

Lemper treasured their time together and her respect for Dietrich is evident in Rendezvous. The journey is biographical. She neatly charts Dietrich’s rise from cabaret singer to Hollywood star to her successful stage shows with music director Burt Bacharach with customary Lemper flair.

Ever the anti-Nazi, Dietrich secured American citizenship and entertained American soldiers in WW II. The Germans never forgave her, still calling her a traitor at her Berlin burial in 1992. Lemper sadly relates her homeland’s cruelty, while relaying Dietrich’s joys and sorrows in song, including Hollaender’s “The Ruins of Berlin.” Mercer’s “When The World Was Young” or Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?”

Capturing the essence of Dietrich’s voice, whether she’s discussing dinners with Billy Wilder, bisexuality or her movies, Lemper maintains her allure — and her mysterious aloofness. While there are moments that could be trimmed, overall, the experience is intimate and moving, the chance to watch a dazzling star channel another.