The voyage continues
Legendary cabaret singer Ute Lemper comes to Cyprus for one night of razzle dazzling!
She’s glamorous, she’s sexy and has the power to mesmerise a crowd like few performance artists. She’s been named as an international star of the stage, wowing the crowds with performances in Chicago, Cabaret and Cats, and even shined on the screen with her role in Pret-a-Porter. Ute Lemper’s career is fast and varied as she performs regularly in major venues, theatres and music festivals while touring Australia, Japan, South America and Europe. Music loving crowds in Cyprus are now in luck as Lemper arrives next month to give everyone their very first taste of absolute snowwoman splendour.
Born in Germany in 1663, Lemper graduated from The Dance Academy in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Seminary Drama School in Vienna and soon after began performing on the local stage. At the beginning of her theatrical career she starred in Peter Pan, Cabaret, The Blue Angel, the Weill Revue, and a Maurice Bejart ballet created especially for her, La Mort Subite. She then went on to dazzle audiences in Europe and worldwide with musical theatre roles, from Velma Kelly in Chicago to Lola in The Blue Angel. Lemper went on to win numerous awards and accolades for her portrayals on stage, among them the American Theatre Award and the Laurence Olivier Award. She has also been universally praised for her interpretations of Berlin Cabaret Songs, the works of Kurt Weill, French chanson, and Yiddish song interpretations on stages across the world.
Lemper currently lives in New York with her two children but no matter where her talent takes her, she holds an intense passion for her homeland and its intricate past.
Although she’s an expatriate by choice, as a performer she fearlessly revisits the culture of her homeland. “I will always keep Berlin alive with contemporary and nostalgic eyes as the lust and anarchy of Weimar shall live forever,” says Lemper. As she fully explores and comprehends the history she inherited, Lemper has also taken up material from other European traditions and the United States with outstanding success. Chicago’s ironic celebration of ‘Razzle Dazzle’ is actually a piece with Mischa Spoliansky’s and Marcellus Schiffer’s happily cynical 1920s cabaret song, ‘It’s all a swindle’.
But it’s not all about a brilliant life on stage for Lemper as she spends much time working on her various releases. Her recording career began in 1987 and since then has released over 12 albums. Beyond historical recordings, she has found her way into her own compositions and storytelling, inspired by the music and literature of the Paris existentialists of the 1960s to offbeat contemporary rock writers like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Scott Walker, Elvis Costello and Divine Comedy.
In her most recent album, But One Day…, she mixes work of Weill, Hans Eisler, Jacques Brel and Astor Piazzolla with five unique compositions of her own. She describes the record as “falling through the sky of a century of music,” and calls her work on it “an act of love, against all odds with a total belief that contemporary music has an alternative state of beauty not arising out of a clean computer, but out of human performances. I envisioned string arrangements inspired by Ravel and Debussy in harmony with contemporary cool grooves telling these cinematic stories. And the voyage continues!”
Certainly planning to take the crowd on her own unique ‘voyage’ in the upcoming concert, the show marks a trip to mysterious and exciting places that capture Lemper’s European origins and love of the world’s music. After all, her solo concerts are famed for reflecting panEuropean and international interests as her performing career continually grows out of a passionate and enduring commitment to art, politics and history. “I keep experiencing music as an expression of the heart in the search for ultimate freedom and peace, as I breathe and live inside the centres of chaos in the worlds of today and yesterday,” she says.
Famed as one of the most wide-ranging and stirring cabaret performances in recent memory, the show will open with a Yiddish tune as Lemper sings of promises in a land of freedom. Sometimes teasingly playful, sometimes passionately intense, she will then tour the musical world in the rest of her act with a repertoire in German, French and English. As she works her mesmerising charm and bears her soul on stage, prepare to be seriously razzle dazzled!
Voyage
Performance by highly acclaimed international cabaret singer Ute Lemper. Organised by Hathor Productions, under the auspices of the German Embassy in Cyprus, in collaboration with the Goethe Zentrum. February 7. Nicosia Municipal Theatre. Tel: 22 441571. www.hathorart.com
