Grammy-nominated German singer Ute Lemper makes a welcome return to the National Concert Hall this December to pay homage to one of her enduring inspirations, the incomparable Marlene Dietrich.
Rendezvous with Marlene offers a compelling mix of monologue and song, based on a three-hour conversation between Marlene and Ute in Paris, three decades ago.
Ute Lemper is globally recognised as one of the foremost interpreters of the works of the Weimar Republic, winning acclaim globally as performer, recording artist and actor. This year she released a new album Time Traveller and her much-anticipated autobiography of the same name.
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Ute discusses Rendezvous with Marlene below.
This amazing telephone conversation between you and Marlene must be filled with magical memories, but what were your first impressions?
It was an unbelievable moment. I had to sit down. I wanted to scream in wonder and yet was so humbled and honored. I was alone in my hotel room and just wanted to share this with someone. I wished I had been prepared with burning questions and more detailed information about her life and movies. But at the time it was a conversation between a very young curious German actress living and working in Paris and a grown actress, a legend with an incredibly rich life story and career, an inspirational free-spirited woman to many generations.
We talked and talked , well mainly she talked I did ask many questions but she just took off. In the middle, after a good hour she had to do something, she said a plumber was there to fix the sink - I think she made that up, maybe she needed to go to the bathroom or pour herself another drink!
Marlene was a groundbreaking woman. She was a free spirit, sexual, seductive, yet masculine, androgynous, totally polygamous in her open marriage. She was politically and morally outspoken and courageous.
Did she say anything about the comparisons the media were drawing between the two of you?
We are both kind of expatriates and have a complicated relationship with our birthland. I lived many years in Berlin, the Berlin of the Cold War, the eighties. I rather feel like a Berliner than a Muensteraner, that is only my childhood. But my years as a young actress in this divided Berlin had a huge impact on my artistic and personal identity. I think Marlene also always had a piece of Berlin inside of her even in her interpretation of 35 Hollywood movie roles.
It is this expressionistic sense of crude reality with a political awareness and a scream in art of pain and longing. She lived in Berlin before the world war and I lived in Berlin after the world war. It was tough to deal with the German history that was put into my cradle ... Nazi Germany and of course the most unbearable fact of the Holocaust. Marlene wore the same scars, inflicted in earlier times as a witness of the war and a witness to the German righteousness after the war.
I started recording the cycle of Kurt Weill and Berlin Kabaret albums at that time in 1987, which defined my connection to the Weimar time as a protagonist of the songs of Jewish exiled composers in hundreds of concerts all over the world. In 1988 I sang the songs of Hollaender and Spoliansky that Marlene had sung in 1928. I was the first German to rerecord this repertoire after the war.
When did you first decide to create a show from the conversation and how did it evolve?
I was asked to play Dietrich in three different stage productions, a play in Paris that shows her love affair with Jean Gabin, a stage show that explores her love affair with Piaf and another smaller British movie. I thought all the scripts portrayed a stereotype and weren’t researched enough. I gave everyone my input and sold my ideas and knowledge for free ... ha! Then I thought, why don’t I write my own play and base it on this one unique personal encounter with her?
Why is it taking place over 30 years after the phone call?
There are many reasons, now 30 years or more later, I can relate to her destiny.
With memories, rich insights, a bunch of research and of course some imagination I wrote this play and included Marlene's most gorgeous songs. It is not an imitation of her, but my reflection of her, my projection.
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Watch: Ute Lemper sings Deitrich classic Lili Marleen
What were the most memorable moments of the conversation?
Marlene recited Rainer Maria Rilke on the phone. She spoke about her movies and songs, mostly about the really sad and heartbreaking songs that she preferred to the light entertaining ones. She spoke about Paris, Jean Gabin, about her daughter Maria Riva, who had written a really ugly book about her. It was fully written at the time of our conversation and Marlene said that she had to beg her daughter on her knees, not to publish it before her death.
She was also very sad about being hated and rejected in Germany. She spoke about men, love and solitude ... and much more.
What do you admire most about Marlene?
Marlene was a groundbreaking woman. She was a free spirit, sexual, seductive, yet masculine, androgynous, totally polygamous in her open marriage. She was politically and morally outspoken and courageous. She was ladylike and bossy at the same time. She had class but loved whisky, dirty jokes and a good smoke. She was a heck of a guy to hang out with, as Billy Wilder said.
She had quite a fractured relationship with Germany. Did she talk about this and if so what were her feelings on it?
After the Germans rejected her in 1960, treating her as a traitor to the fatherland, having been a soldier for the US Army during World War 2, she said the Germans and I no longer speak the same language. She was never welcomed back ... only in her coffin .. and not even then.
Only 100 years after her birthday the Germans embraced her again. Berlin finally dedicated a big Square to her: the Marlene Dietrich Platz.
How has your relationship with Marlene evolved over the course of performing the show? Do you feel a duty to her?
I wish I had been older when we had the conversation. Marlene asked on the phone how old I was and she was disappointed when I told her I was 24. She wanted an equal... a girlfriend, but I was not there yet. Now, I try to be a good friend of hers telling her story.
Many things happened to her legacy and to mine too after her death throughout those years after the fall of the Wall, the new united Germany etc. Marlene's story is a complicated one and it hurts, it’s a painful story and an embarrassing story for Germany honestly. It took Germany a hundred years to finally embrace her. How deeply rooted is nationalism and extreme righteousness and rightwing hatred?
What do you hope people take away from the show?
Oh, you are in for a story of history, fate, courage, style, politics, glamour and sex, talent and a huge career in a devilish dance around the fire between Berlin and Hollywood, youth and age.
You will hear incredible parts of her story, you probably do not even know, it is shocking. But I lived through enough times of provincial populism that brings out the worst in human beings to also talk about that part of Marlene's story. But there is much more than that to this Lady... come check it out!
Rendezvous with Marlene is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on December 2nd - find out more here.
