14.02.2020,Zagreb,KD Lisinski – Koncert kabaret dive Ute Lemper i zagrebackog filharmonijskog orkestra pod dirigentom Robertom Farkasem.
Photo: Jurica Galoic/PIXSELL

Publication: Glazbeni.info
Date: February 14, 2020

Svakom svojom gestom, svakom izvedbom, jedinstvenim načinom na koji je, ovoga petka 14.2. u Off ciklusu Zagrebačke filharmonije, vodila publiku kroz svoje uzbudljive i privlačne, bogate i raznolike umjetničke svjetove, Ute Lemper opravdala je naslov koncerta i potvrdila da je umjetnica svjetskoga sjaja.

Bila je jednostavno – diva!

14.02.2020,Zagreb,KD Lisinski – Koncert kabaret dive Ute Lemper i zagrebackog filharmonijskog orkestra pod dirigentom Robertom Farkasem.
Photo: Jurica Galoic/PIXSELL

Osvojila je pozornicu i pomela sve pred sobom, svojom pojavom, scenskim nastupom, savršenom dikcijom, bijelom i crvenom toaletom koje je zamijenila na polovici koncerta, svojim prvorazrednim umijećem glume, pjeva i pokreta kojim je prelazila s pjesme na pjesmu, iz žanra u žanr, stvarajući čaroliju glazbenog teatra, onakvu kakvu mogu stvoriti samo najveći.

A Ute Lemper jedna je od njih!

Izborom programa, kao i konferansom između pojedinih brojeva, provela je publiku Off ciklusaglazbenim centrima svijeta, od newyorškoga Broadwaya do berlinskog kabareta i od londonskoga West Enda do pariškog Montmartrea. Bilo je to putovanje kroz njezinu vlastitu karijeru i prošlost, ali i kroz karijere velikih umjetnika s kojima su je dovodili u vezu, s kojima je bila u kontaktu ili im se i sama divila.

Večer s daškom glamura nije prošla bez Marlene Dietrich, dive s kojom su je često uspoređivali, ali ni bez Edith Piaf, Jacquesa Brela, Boba Dylana, Kurta Weilla i mnogih drugih. Na ukusno osvijetljenoj sceni, uz Zagrebačku filharmoniju pod vodstvom maestra Roberta Farkasa, bila je to mala škola scenske umjetnosti i velika predstava života, koju nam je na dan zaljubljenih darovala Ute Lemper – jednostavno diva!

Putovanje s Ute zaključeno je dugim pljeskom i s čak dva dodatka, a ovosezonsko putovanje Off ciklusa nastavlja se uskoro, već 6.3. kada će u dvorani Lisinski nastupiti umjetnik kojega u Zagrebu ne treba posebno predstavljati, veliki slovenski kantautor Zoran Predin.

Koncert najavljuje kao jedan od vrhunaca svoje karijere, nazvao ga je, prigodno, “Počasni krug”, s nestrpljenjem ga iščekuje, stoga: Isključite probleme i 6.3. ponovno uključite glazbu.

Ne propustite Zorana Predina i Zagrebačku filharmoniju – samo u Off ciklusu!

Click here to read this review in the original publication

Photo: David Andrako

Publication: ReviewSphere
Date: 9 February, 2020
By: Peter Callaghan

When an artist instructs her drummer to “pull the plug” you’d be forgiven for thinking that their gig is going south faster than Ruth Davidson’s taxi to the House of Lords. But Ute Lemper’s cry from the stage was in reference to an errant smoke machine which brought a blast of Storm Ciara in from the cold to fill The Queen’s Hall with a Hound of the Baskervilles mist.

Plug duly pulled (not to mention technicians duly eyeballed) it was back to business: the exceptional Lemper’s spellbinding homage to Marlene Dietrich inspired by a late-night phone call, over thirty years ago, between the rising star Lemper whose Moliere Award-winning performance as Sally Bowles earned her the title of “the new Marlene” and “a woman of the future” in the shape of the enigmatic Dietrich who had been holed up in her Paris apartment for over a decade.

The call itself prompted by Lemper’s letter to apologise for the comparison and thank her for being an inspiration.

Based on the titular “rendezvous”, which is given added spice by recollections from one of Dietrich’s legions of lovers (of both persuasions) film director Billy Wilder, and shaped by the reclusive star’s preference for asking rather than answering provocative questions, the show isn’t so much a conversation, more a one-way purging of the soul in which Dietrich not only reflects upon her life and career, but more importantly invites Lemper and the audience to never forget the horrors of war.

Pete Seeger’s Where Have All The Flowers Gone? and Bob Dylan’s The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowin’ In The Wind bookmarking the concert to perfection.

Having publicly renounced her German citizenship in revulsion at the rise of Nazism, Dietrich parked thoughts of killing Hitler with a poisoned hair needle in favour of supporting the Allied forces by “serving” under many a General. Not to mention politician, writer and movie star. Though Judy Garland proved true to her torch song in being The Man That Got Away.

The real (and perhaps only) love of her life to merit such a description, however, was the French actor Jean Gabin whose absence left her “nursing an empty space in my heart that I cannot fill.” As did her strained relationship with her daughter Maria Riva who later penned an unflattering memoir. Hence Lemper’s initial description of Dietrich as being “sad and bitter”.

Such personal and political strands intertwine to form the golden thread which runs through Lemper’s commanding performance as she owns the stage, the material and her instrument. Proving that her star qualities have not diminished since she shot to fame in the early 80s as a “young and stretchable” Grizabella in the original Vienna production of Cats.

Her performance, together with that of the band (Vana Gierig on piano, Cyril Garac on violin, Matthias Daneck on drums and Romain Lécuyer – when he emerged from the toilet – on bass), drew a standing ovation and many of the songs generated prolonged applause. However, Rendezvous With Marlene is not a typical biographical concert with a formulaic intro and number structure; more a series of dramatic monologues spliced with shards of songs which are so seamlessly bonded to the text that their passing often goes without acknowledgement.

Unlike Dietrich’s whose funeral was tarnished with stink bombs and civic memorials for whom were curtailed by death threats! In stark contrast to her current iconic status which like Lemper’s performance can best be described by the closing lyric of Friedrich Hollaender’s Black Market – “Enjoy my goods, for boy my goods are hot!”

Click here to read the article on ReviewSphere

Publication: Northern Soul
Date: 6 February, 2020
By: Kevin Bourke

★ ★ ★ ★

It was 1987 in Paris and young cabaret performer Ute Lemper was opening as Sally Bowles in the stage musical Cabaret.

The production was a huge success, with Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in the front row on the first night. Many of the show’s rave reviews dubbed Lemper ‘the new Marlene Dietrich’ and, somewhat embarrassed by the comparison, Lemper sent a postcard to her hero, then aged 78 and a recluse in her Paris apartment, essentially apologising for the media hype. Lemper, after all, was just at the beginning of her career in theatre and music, whereas Dietrich could look back on a long, fulfilled life of movies, music, incredible collaborations, love stories and stardom. To her utter astonishment, Lemper recalls that “Marlene rang me, out of the blue, and we had a three hour phone conversation about her career, her love affairs, her songs. I put it away in my memory and rarely talked about it.”

Five years later, Dietrich was dead. But she lives again in Lemper’s enthralling new show Rendezvous With Marlene, inspired by that remarkable conversation. “I decided it was time to give her life again, mixed with my own choices and my own personal experiences,” explains Lemper. “It’s a dialogue between the two of us, and I had to grow to a certain age to capture her bitterness, her craziness, to bring her story back and tell people today how important she was.

“She was a woman of the future in the 1920s, in the 1930s, and the 1960s and she still is today. She broke the rules. She hated authority and autocrats. She was against male domination of society. She was androgynous in her style. She was very much the boss and absolutely sexy. It was a new aesthetic at the time. She was equally attracted to both sexes, and slept with virtually everyone she worked with, men or women.”

All of these things, as well as a virulent hatred of the Nazis which led to her exile to Hollywood and a whole new career there collaborating with the likes of Billy Wilder and Hitchcock, as well as fervently supporting the Allies’ war efforts, are touched on in this fascinating, enlightening, intense, often moving, and always entertaining two and a half hour show. Adeptly supported by a four-piece ensemble of keyboard, violin, upright bass and drums, Lemper performs most of the songs you might expect, including Just a Gigolo, One For My Baby, The Boys in the Backroom, Lola, and, of course, Lili Marleen (Lili Marlene). Her performance is exceptional, aided by, like Dietrich, a fluency in English and French, as well as their native German, but this is much more than a mere imitation; this is clarification of the themes of loneliness, tragedy, love and friendship that informed Dietrich’s choices. Equally, tales involving such familiar names as Wilder, Burt Bacharach, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and many others become far more than just showbiz anecdotes in this superb tribute to one astonishing woman from another.

Click here to read the article on Northern Soul

Photo: MaxMara

Publication: GScene
Date: 6 Feb 2020
By: Brian Butler

From the moment the languid full-throated bluesy voice sings Falling In Love Again you know that the next 150 minutes in the company of performer Ute Lemper and subject Marlene Dietrich is going to be pure gold – and so it is.

Supported by keyboards, double bass, violin and drums Miss Lemper recreates a phone conversation she had with the reclusive octogenarian more than 30 years ago.

Marlene was a phone addict – calling the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and other leaders to give them the benefit of her advice. The show’s premise is based solidly in Ute’s recollections of her 3-hour conversation which ranged over happiness in sexual encounters to anger and sadness about the rise of the Nazis.

The 20-something rising star had been dubbed “ The new Marlene “ by the French press after her stage opening in Cabaret and the old superstar was clearly intrigued. Ute tells us that Marlene was a woman of the future with a message to give to all of us – the need to stop asking questions about the past in order to make a better future.

Marlene declares “ If I had my life again I would live it all the same , except I’d start earlier.”

What Ute gives us is a picture of a sad and funny, highly sexed, amazingly talented woman and she cleverly weaves appropriate songs into the narrative – such as the deeply-throated Just a Gigolo.

Her time with composer Burt Bacharach led her to Vegas , represented here by the drunkard’s lament One For My Baby, where Lemper seems to hang onto the notes in a vain attempt at keeping a grip on reality.

But the central phone conversation is no interview as Marlene says abruptly “ I don’t want to answer questions , I want to talk … about myself. “

The songs are often bitter and sharp – Marlene’s preference was for sad songs – and in Black Market there is a searing level of cynicism in the ruins of post-war Berlin – “ want to buy some illusions – slightly used, almost new ? “ she asks.

And Ute’s great skill is not to impersonate but to inhabit the character – from the bitter Where Have All the Flowers Gone to the deeply emotional Blowin in The Wind. The performer switches effortlessly between 3 women – the 50-something Ute of today, the 20-something aspiring actress and the octogenarian star living in squalor trapped in the prison of her Paris apartment.

There’s much comedy in the night – as when Marlene reels off a list of her lovers – from JFK and his father to Frank Sinatra, Orson Welles and Edith Piaf and Mae West. The only one she admits evaded her clutches was Judy Garland.

But there was only one true love in her life – the French movie star Jean Gabin whom she left but loved for the rest of her life – here brought to musical life in a haunting sometimes semi-whispered version of Ne Me Quitte Pas , which tears at our hearts.

The simple staging is augmented by a few essential props and costumes and it is when Marlene emerges in a glittery golden frock by Dior which she made Hitchcock buy her for the film Stagefright, that she seems to rise and truly glow in her all-important key light on stage.

Ute is every inch the “ new Marlene “ and she brings us a theatrical event that will be talked about for years to come by new generations encountering Dietrich for the first time.

A staggering night of pure-diamond entertainment.

Rendezvous is on tour – see February’s edition of Gscene for Brian Butler’s full-length interview with Ute.

Click here to read the review on GScene