A cabaret master impresses

Slovenians were enchanted by the German Ute Lemper, who made a name for herself on concert and theatre stages.

In the past few days, the Ljubljana Festival hosted the famous Ute Lemper., a versatile German artist who has made a name for herself on concert and theatre stages and in various film productions. She was accompanied by the Slovenian Youth Orchestra under the baton of Živa Ploj Peršuh at the Križanke Summer Theatre. Her projects have taken her to many prestigious world stages and she has collaborated with a wide range of renowned orchestras.

Among her most acclaimed projects are Forever, a tribute to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (whose poems she set to music), and Bukowski, a rather different collage project, a neo avant-garde sound collage interpretation of the poetry of Charles Bukowski. Her current work as a composer is a setting of texts by Paulo Coelho, or a selection of texts from his book The Accra Manuscript. Although her name is mainly associated with the genre of cabaret, her repertoire is very wide and she is particularly appreciated for her interpretations of the poems and songs of Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht.

To open the concert, we heard Three Dance Episodes from the musical On the Town, Édith Piaf's famous Milord and a few songs by Jacques Brel, followed by a selection of diverse compositions, including Bob Dylan's evergreen Blowin' in the Wind. The audience, overwhelmed and visibly moved, greeted her with a roaring applause and standing ovation. Her performance is certainly one of the highlights of the Ljubljana Festival and will definitely be remembered.