DIVA TALK: Catching Up with Ute Lemper Plus News of Minnelli, Peters and Chenoweth
By Andrew Gans
Question: What's it like working in that space, which is so intimate?
Lemper: It's very small, and it's a total difference than most of the other concerts I do, which are in concert halls. I enjoy very much the audience. It's like being in your living room, basically. And most of the crowd, I probably would invite them for dinner at home because the crowd is great there! People of my spirit — free thinkers and paradise birds and people who just want to have a good time, interested. They all have the foundation to understand the German and the French. They know the European chanson is what they're going to get from me, with a little bit of a take into different areas. The people who come there, they know it's not going to be a Cole Porter evening, but it will be a more edgy, European chanson evening. Most of the audience is super-educated. Plus, half of them are very crazy. Half of the audience is crazy, and they are out there to play, so they just want me to go down there and please them until they get mad and wild and come with me on this funny journey!
Question: Since you do perform concerts all around the world, do you find any difference in audience reaction in different countries? Do you find you have to tailor your concerts to different audiences? Lemper: I would say probably one of the best audiences anywhere in the world is the New York audience, especially the downtown audience. It has the students, it has the international crowd. Lots of Europeans and Americans and people from everywhere, South America. You have a broad musical taste and also an audience who really digest as much classical music as they do theatrical music or jazz music or pop music. It's a really fine audience who is familiar with a lot of different genres of music and speaks a lot of languages — also a large amount of gay audience and Jewish audience, which I like because I sing Yiddish song cycles, too, and they really love it here in this place in the city.
I would say that Germany, in a funny way, is the country where I avoid most of Brecht and Weill and anything political about the Weimar Republic. . . .The Germans just don't want to hear it. They don't want to face the past and think about it. They just want to have a good time, so I choose mostly, in Germany, the contemporary repertoire. My album works very good in Germany because it's contemporary. French audiences are always very special, always very connected to the words, very poetic: the purer, the better. The more fragile, the better. They don't like the powerful, rather American, energetic, forthcoming thing. They like the very intimate, Impressionistic, broken soul performance. [Laughs.] The simpler the songs, the better out there. Every audience is a little different. The Mediterranean audiences all love anything French, also the German — they always want me to sing "Lili Marlene" there. In Spain and Portugal, they have this very nostalgic and passionate love for the performers. Also, [there are] great audiences in South America. Buenos Aires is fantastic, and Brazil. It's always surprising. I go so far away, and I can't believe that even people know my name there. Even New Zealand or Melbourne, Australia... it's unbelievable. I'm very grateful for that, probably through the recordings, the early recordings, my stuff got spread around the world that way. What a fantastic gift that was.
Question: Do you have an interest in returning to Broadway? Lemper: Of course, it's a fantastic place to perform, and yes I'm talking to my agent regularly. He says this and this, but it just doesn't seem the right thing for me [at this time]. . . . I have already booked my performances two years ahead, especially if I go to classical venues, then I have to break the contract. It feels like, over the years, I have settled really into this concert career, which is an international podium for me. It feels like it works out better, because I am, after all, an ambassador to this niche of music of the European chanson. I am trying to keep it alive in the world, the stuff of Brecht and Weill. The music of the past, which was banned music by the Nazis, had a very strong meaning — this music and the composers which were banned out of Germany and oppressed from the Germans. As a German from a different generation, it almost became a mission for me to really sing this repertoire worldwide, to keep it alive. Now I am rather an older generation. I'm not the young one anymore, and I stand there and represent this music. I connect it to the present time, which is a very important aspect, of course. This is a fantastic mission, and I take it as an honor to be an ambassador to this music and to work that way.
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[Ute Lemper plays Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street in Manhattan, Nov. 14-15, Nov. 22 and Nov. 28-29. For reservations visit www.joespub.com. For more information go to utelemper.com.]
DIVA TIDBITS Bernadette Peters , most recently seen in the Lifetime film "Living Proof," will be the headline attraction at the 2009 Adelaide Cabaret Festival in Australia. Peters will bring her acclaimed concert act to the Festival Theatre June 6-7, 2009. Richard Jay-Alexander will direct; musical director Marvin Laird will conduct the orchestra. The annual festival, which is run by new artistic director David Campbell , will be presented June 5-20. For more information about the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, visit www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au.
Liza Minnelli photo by Rick Day
She's already a hit, and performances have yet to begin. That's right: The limited engagement of
Liza's at the Palace . . .! — starring Tony, Grammy, Oscar and Emmy Award winner
Liza Minnelli — has been extended by two weeks. As previously reported,
Liza's at the Palace — produced by John Scher/Metropolitan Talent Presents & Jubilee Time Productions — will begin performances at Broadway's Palace Theatre Dec. 3. Originally scheduled to run through Dec. 14, the production will now play through Dec. 28. A holiday matinee on Dec. 24 has also been added to the playing schedule. The Palace Theatre is located at Broadway and 47th Street. Tickets, priced $25-$125, will be available by calling (212) 307-4100 or (800) 755-4000. For more information visit www.lizasatthepalace.com.
Tony Award winner and "Pushing Daisies" Emmy nominee Kristin Chenoweth , who recently released her first holiday CD, is scheduled to be part of the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Chenoweth will perform "Christmas Waltz" — a song featured on her new disc "A Lovely Way to Spend Christmas" — at the Nov. 27 annual parade. The acclaimed singing actress will also be featured on CBS' "Sunday Morning" (Nov. 23), NBC's "The Today Show" (Dec. 1 and 2) and ABC's "The View" (Dec. 1). The ever-busy performer will also join the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for a one-night-only concert Jan. 10, 2009 at the Fox Theatre.
A new version of The Diva-lution of Molly Pope , which premiered this past summer at Joe's Pub, is headed to the Laurie Beechman Theatre on West 42nd Street. Directed and produced by Ben Rimalower (Joy, The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero ), Diva-lution will play the intimate theatre Nov. 19, Dec. 8 and Dec. 15 at 9:30 PM. Musical director Sonny Paladino will lead a small band. Cabaretgoers can expect to hear Pope's renditions of Dietz and Schwartz's "By Myself," Cole Porter's "It's Alright With Me" and The Cardigans' "Love Fool," among others. The Laurie Beechman Theatre is located within the West Bank Café at 42nd Street, just west of Ninth Avenue. There is a $20 cover charge and a $15 food-drink minimum; for reservations call (212) 695-6909 or e-mail beechmantheatre@aol.com.
Singer-actress Kate Pazakis will make her debut at the Zipper Theatre Factory in a brand-new show entitled Kate Pazakis: Unzipped! The Dec. 9 concert, which will feature a mix of pop, rock, country and musical theatre tunes, will be recorded live for future CD sale. Brian J. Nash will head a live band, and Seth Rudetsky will be the evening's special guest. Show time is 10:30 PM. The Zipper Theatre Factory is located in Manhattan at 336 West 37th Street. Tickets, priced $15 (advance) and $20 (at the door), are available by calling (212) 352-3101 or by visiting www.TheZipperFactory.com.
LaVon Fisher-Wilson , who made her Broadway debut in The Color Purple , will join the Tony Award-winning revival of Kander and Ebb's Chicago Nov. 14. Fisher-Wilson will succeed Carol Woods as Matron "Mama" Morton. The singing actress is scheduled to stay with the long-running production at the Ambassador Theatre through Jan. 1, 2009. The musical revival will also celebrate its 12th anniversary and its 5,000th performance on Broadway Nov. 14. Visit www.chicagothemusical.com for additional information.
Linda Eder , the powerhouse singer seen on Broadway in Jekyll & Hyde , will offer a holiday-themed concert in Chicago next month. Linda Eder Rocks the Holidays is scheduled for Dec. 13 at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University. The evening will feature Eder's holidays favorites as well as tunes from her new solo recording, "The Other Side of Me." Show time is 8 PM. The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University is located at 50 E. Congress Parkway in Chicago, IL. Tickets, priced $40-$75 (with $95 premium seats), are available by calling (312) 902-1400 or by visiting www.BroadwayInChicago.com.
Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.
