Ute Lemper life and biography

Ute Lemper is a German singer and actress renowned for her interpretation of the work of Kurt Weill.

Ute Lemper has refused to pigeonhole herself into one realm of entertainment. Whether dancing, singing, or acting, Lemper has learned to command the stage and her audience. Consistently compared to actress and cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich, Lemper doesn't just sing; she grabs the audience's attention and leads them into the emotion of the music with her body language and vocal fluctuations.

Lemper was born to an opera singer mother and banker father in Muenster, Germany. Influenced by music at a young age, she studied piano, voice, and ballet. She grew up listening to American jazz and pop music. Her mother hoped that Lemper would decide on a career as a ballerina. "I was too crazy for that," Lemper told the London Sunday Times. "I have too much crazy passion to be disciplined as you have to be as a classical dancer. I was more interested in performing, entertainment, acting. If a song was acted, it was fine; if a song was just sung, I wasn't very good, because my voice wasn't extraordinary."

As she grew up, Lemper started getting up onstage, dancing, singing, and acting children's parts in operettas and plays at the theater where her mother worked. At age 15, Lemper kicked off her career performing in jazz and piano bars. From there, she continued her studies in acting at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. She went on to study classical theater at the prestigious Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. Her first significant stage production came in two roles in Andrew Lloyd Weber's Cats when she was 21. She alternated between the parts of Grizabella and Bombalurina. She also performed in other stage productions like Peter Pan, in which she played the title role, and in Cabaret as Sally Bowles.

While she performed in Peter Pan, Lemper also appeared in a Berlin revue of Kurt Weill's music. Once the revue ended, the State Theatre in Stuttgart offered her an engagement to perform classical and contemporary drama. Starting with the music she learned and listened to in Berlin, Lemper wrote the script for a musical biography of Weill, from his early collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht and his flight from Nazi Germany in 1915, to his American citizenship and his American musicals. The news of her production spread throughout Europe.

"I am very curious about the period between the two world wars," Lemper told the Sunday Times. "Everyone who was important in the 1930s had to emigrate because their art was revolutionary and anti-convention. The artists who stayed worked later for the Nazis." Lemper's curiosity and background led her to infuse her work with political passion. She wanted to revive interest in this era's music and theater, which the Nazis had eliminated. In 1989 Lemper released her first album on London Records, called Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill. She made a strong impression in America, and the LP reached Number One on Billboard's classical crossover chart. The following year, she earned a nomination for the Laurence Olivier award for her Weill recital in London. Her second Weill performance, Three Penny Opera, was released the same year.

Lemper made her mother's dreams come true when she performed as a principal dancer in a ballet Maurice Bejart created specifically for her. The ballet, La Morte Subite, premiered in Paris in 1991 and continued on to Germany. By this time, Lemper's popularity in Germany had grown to such an intensity that she decided to move to London. "In Germany, I cannot live a free life anymore," she told the Sunday Times. "I'm watched in the streets. Everything about my private life--whenever I go out with someone--is reported in the newspapers. I can't go to the supermarket because everybody knows my face. I did too many television shows.... And I want to live in a city which is culturally interesting. London is the Mecca at the moment, more interesting than New York."

Lemper's third album for London Records, Seven Deadly Sins, made a splash on the music scene, and she also released Crimes of the Heart on CBS Records that year. She made her film debut as the haughty Queen Marie-Antoinette in the French production of L'Austrichienne. Later, Lemper worked on two other French films--Pierre Qui Biule, a contemporary political film, and Jean Galmot, a nineteenth-century adventure.

In 1992 Lemper collaborated with Michael Nyman to record Songbook. The two artists created music to accompany lyrics based on classic verse by such famous poets as Paul Celan, Arthur Rimbaud, and William Shakespeare. Lemper also performed the role of Lola in Berlin's five-month run of The Blue Angel in 1992. After her performance, she moved back to Berlin and recorded Kurt Weill Songs, Volume II, on London Records. Later in the year, she released another LP, Illusions--her personal interpretation of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich songs.

Illusions spent more than 15 weeks in the Number One slot of Billboard's crossover charts, and became the best-selling crossover album of the year. Billboard named Ute Lemper the Number One classical crossover artist of 1993. "Lemper ... can best be described as a very tasteful cabaret artist," wrote Susan Elliot in Billboard, "one with a good deal more emotional authenticity than, say, Barbra Streisand or Liza Minnelli, both of whom she has been compared to."

Though critics have praised her glamorous image, Lemper has attributed that characteristic to her portrayal of emotion. "The glamorous part of the image is not really me," she said in the Los Angeles Times. "I am not at all glamorous, and it's really contrary to what I want to do on stage. I prefer to think I am very straightforward ... although maybe still with a secret. Glamour is not what I'm looking for in my performance. I'm looking for emotional expression, not in a sentimental or stylized way, but with complete honesty and directness." Lemper sings mostly in German and French, and uses visual enhancement as much as her vocals to enliven her performances.

Constantly expanding her credits, Lemper performed at La Scala in Milan in an homage to opera singer Cathy Berberian. She also made her debut with the London Symphony Orchestra with conductor Kent Nagano. She took her talents into yet another area with an exhibition in Paris of her oil paintings, which received a warm reception from the press.

In 1994 Lemper began working with acclaimed director Robert Altman on his film Ready to Wear, which depicts the inner workings of the fashion industry. Lemper played the role of an eight-months-pregnant model named Albertine. Continuing her trend of nonstop work, Lemper released City of Strangers on London Records in 1995, which included songs by American composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

Discography:
- Cats (original German cast recording, 1983)
-Ute Lemper Singt Kurt Weill (1987)
-Life is a Cabaret (1987)
-Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill (1988)
-Starlight Express (original German cast recording, 1988)
-I Dreamed a Dream (1988)
-Crimes of the Heart (1989)
-Die Dreigroschenoper (1990)
-The Seven Deadly Sins (1990)
-The Wall - Live in Berlin (1990)
-Arielle, die Meerjungfrau (1990)
-Andrew Lloyd Webber Welterfolge (1990)
-Prospero's Books (1991)
-Ute Lemper Live: Ihre Grossen Tournee-Erfolge (1991)
-The Michael Nyman Songbook (1991)
-Homo Faber (1991)
-Guarda La Fotografia (1991)
-Illusions (1992)
-Komisch' Wetter (1992)
-Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill - Volume 2 (1993)
-Espace Indécent (1993)
-Portrait of Ute Lemper (1995)
-City of Strangers: Songs by Sondheim, Prévert... (1995)
-Die Eisprinzessin (1995)
-Birds in Cages (1995)
-Der Glöckner von Notre-Dame (1996)
-Bogus (1996)
-Berlin Cabaret Songs (versions in English and German, 1996/1997)
-Nuits Étranges (1997)
-All That Jazz: The Best of Ute Lemper (1998)
-Chicago (London cast recording, 1998)
-Kurt Gerrons Karussell (1999)
-Punishing Kiss (2000)
-Little Water Song (2000)
-But One Day... (2002, Decca/Universal Classics)
-Blood & Feathers: Live from the Café Carlyle(2005)

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