Come to The Cabaret! Artist Profile: Ute Lemper

Few artists can enthral an audience like the renowned vocalist and actress Ute Lemper. Her career is vast and varied. She has made her mark on the stage, in films, in concert and as a unique recording artist and interpreter of sultry Berlin cabaret, French Chanson and the works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.


Ute was born in Münster, Germany in 1963. After graduation from the Dance Academy in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Seminary Drama School in Vienna, she started performing in Stuttgart with roles in plays by Fassbinder and others. She went on to dazzle audiences in Europe and worldwide in musical theatre roles - Velma Kelly in Chicago (London, New York, Las Vegas), Lola in The Blue Angel, Peter in Peter Pan (both in Berlin), Cats in Vienna and Sally Bowles in Jérôme Savary's Paris production of Cabaret. Yet she returned again and again to the dark, complex and powerfully creative German past, in solo concerts like Kurt Weill Recital and Berlin Cabaret Evening; in symphony concerts, including The Seven Deadly Sins and Songs from Kurt Weill; in Pina Bausch's Kurt Weill Revue; and on the discs Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill (Vols. I & II), The Threepenny Opera, The Seven Deadly Sins, Mahagonny Songspiel, and Berlin Cabaret Songs (comprising works of songwriters censored or persecuted by the National Socialists).

Ute's edgy aesthetic and repertoire also reach far beyond Germany. Though she says, "I cannot stress enough my life's journey exploring repertoire inspired by art of the Weimar Republic," she points out that this art also "reflects other philosophical and cultural horizons, other political matters, and other times." In order fully to explore and comprehend the history she inherited, Ute has naturally and with brilliant success taken up material from other European traditions and from the United States. Ute has explored the French chanson from Edith Piaf, Jacques Prévert, Joseph Kosma and Serge Gainsbourg to the Belgian poet Jacques Brel. She also explored the contemporary alternative rock repertoire – from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello to Nick Cave on her Punishing Kiss album – and finally created her own original material which can be heard on the latest album But One Day...

Ute has just recorded and co produced, with Todd Turkisher, a complete album with her own original songs. She wrote music and lyrics and together with her band, arranged a unique song cycle of unusual stories about places, cities, lives and love.

Following a remarkable début with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2007, hailed by the Irish Independent as 'brilliant, stunning and totally captivating', she returns on Tuesday, December 1 to command and mesmerise with her elegant, eloquent, inimitable style.

Signature Series: Ute Lemper with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Tuesday, December 1. Show 8pm. Tickets from €25.
Click HERE for booking info.