January 1- 7, 2004
art
No Cabaret,
 The sin cycle: Ute Lemper will interpret Seven Deadly Sins in a performance with The Philadelphia Orchestra. 
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Ute Lemper does Weill and Brecht for keeps.
"Cabaret," like "genius" and "diva," is one of the most overused, wrongly appointed words -- a catchall to describe singers with lumps in their throats, trilling dramatically romanticized songs written between the wars in little rooms.
Not Ute Lemper. Since the late '80s, the German expatriate has not simply kept alive the flame of the sarcastic sociopolitical Berlin song, she's lit a forest fire. She's reclaimed the chilly but sensuous decadence of the Weimar's creaky melodies for the cosmopolitan present with an aggressive, bittersweet soprano that'd melt a polar cap.
For her upcoming Philadelphia appearances, Lemper's returning to an old friend: Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Seven Deadly Sins. It's part of "London, Berlin, Vienna," an evening with The Philadelphia Orchestra that also includes their interpretation of Haydn's Symphony No. 98 and Strauss' Suite from Der Rosenkavalier. For Seven Deadly Sins, Lemper will be joined by four local male vocalists -- tenors Richard Troxell and Kenneth Garner, baritone Tom Baust and bass Matthew Arnold.
"The cabaret of Berlin doesn't exist within the American spectrum," says Lemper of the political satire, the comedy, the edginess and the sexuality of German composers like Weill, Brecht, Friedrich Hollaender and Mischa Spoliansky, whose songs she's mined continuously since the start of her career. "American cabaret is lighthearted and entertaining -- one-woman, one-man, apolitical, dessert music," she says of a repertory of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim songs. "I love those songs. But my style and edginess lives within the European, the philosophical and the theatrical -- German cabaret, French chanson." From songs Dietrich and Piaf made famous to the censured entartete musik that fills Berlin Cabaret Songs to the volumes of Weill songs she's covered, Lemper seeks the dark and the existential, "the underground of society rather than the aboveground of stardom and light."
Despite dwelling underground, Lemper's no secret. To Broadway/West End lodgers, she's Sally Bowles (Cabaret), Lola (The Blue Angel) and Velma Kelly (Chicago), the role that brought her to Manhattan. "Right after Bebe Neuwirth left the part, I took over," she said of the now-famed role, perfect for her leggy, lanky frame. "I certainly brought a bit of the German -- rougher, more flamboyant -- to Velma. I wanted her to be more sarcastic and ruthlessly sexual."
Her move to Manhattan wasn't supposed to be permanent. But after living in London and Paris, New York City is the place where she least feels like a foreigner. And though she took on Tom Waits for her album, Punishing Kiss, and recorded, for the first time, her own songs with players like Laurie Anderson on But One Day…, she hasn't over-Anglicized her shockingly theatrical tunes. "I don't think I've adapted to an American market," she says, after recording in Manhattan with its finest avant, jazz and Brazilian session musicians. "Nor would I want to. I do definitely strongly need that European dimension in my music, that angst." Lemper also just returned from a European tour of singing Middle Eastern, Arabic and Hebrew songs under the umbrella of The Nomad Project. "The tragedy of humanity is all here," she says of singing in Russian, Hebrew and Hungarian for Nomad.
Having recorded Weill and Brecht's vicious, literate songs repeatedly, Lemper finds the sort of nuances as would a cineaste watching Citizen Kane for the hundredth time. "Sometimes I use the straightforward, authentic orchestral accompaniment of its original 1928 arrangements, sometimes a piano recital. What I really love is to have my band rock them out and rough them up so to bring out the aggressive-ity. It's my mission to bring those tunes into this century," she says of the contemporary chill and intuitive vocals she finds within moments like "Surabaya Johnny" and "Alabama-Song."
Lemper has performed the Brecht/Weill mini-opera Seven Deadly Sins since age 18 and believes it's their best -- musically complex, filled with passionate string lines, gorgeous yet destructive at the same time. "These songs are not klezmatic, like, say Threepenny Opera or Happy End. And there's a contemporariness to it," says Lemper of the farce's journey through the American Dream. "It's about the original image of making it from nobody to millionaire, a society forced to deal with the power of money and finding identity within that," she laughs, a little uncomfortably. "And a woman, without self-esteem, who sells everything -- her soul, her skin, her body -- to get to money. It's ruthless. It's filled with immoral actions. It's a satire, a criticism of capitalist society."
Ute Lemper performs Fri., Jan. 2, 2 p.m., Sat., Jan. 3, 8 p.m. and Mon., Jan. 5, 8 p.m., $10-$120, Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St., 215-893-1999.
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