Ute Lemper: Cabaret Star Returns

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“In music, we roam through the mysteries of life and learn that we should never tame our wildness.” So declares stage, cabaret and recording star Ute Lemper, and anyone who has experienced a Lemper performance will likely affirm the bracing fearlessness and, yes, wildness that are among the singer’s hallmarks.

Count, also, among those hallmarks the willowy and sinuous silhouette, the expansive gestural life, the performer’s large and lively eyes—and, of course, a versatile and flexible voice capable of transiting with apparent effortlessness from delicate pianissimi to brash middle-range tones to rich, earthy alto growls.

Now, for the first time in nearly a decade, Lemper returns to the Canadian stage with performances scheduled at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Jan. 26 and at Montreal’s Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on Jan. 28, 2024.

Lemper’s accomplishments are dazzling: a 1987 Molière Award as Best Newcomer for her performance as Europe’s first Sally Bowles in the Paris production of the Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret; 1998’s Olivier Award as Best Actress in a Musical for her star turn as Velma Kelly in the London production of Chicago (a role she had earlier nailed in the 1996 Broadway revival).

And—probably the performer’s most enduring legacy—her position as foremost modern interpreter of that distinctive, idiosyncratic genre of music from 1920s-era Weimar Germany: cabaret music by composers such as Kurt Weill and his contemporaries that, in after years, seemed consigned to a twilight mode of elegiac, backward-glancing performance by the likes of the late Lotte Lenya (Weill’s one-time wife).

But Lemper (along with performers such as the now-retired Teresa Stratas) is rightly celebrated for having virtually reinvented this deposit of material for a contemporary world, conveying it with an insouciant freshness that seemingly effaces the intervening years.

“I feel like a time traveller,” says Lemper, “and see that certain songs written a long time ago carry an even more important message today. I want to sing those songs!”

In her upcoming Canadian performances, titled Ute Lemper: From Berlin to Broadway, the singer will offer an array of music from her storied career—from works by Weill (including the Bertolt Brecht collaboration, Weimar Suite) to Broadway (including numbers from Cabaret and Chicago) and even French chansons (such as Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas”).

Canada’s world-class FILMharmonique Orchestra will provide the richly textured accompaniment, under the baton of award-winning conductor Francis Choinière.