German chanteuse, known in Europe for outstanding stage performances in hit shows.
The daughter of a banker father and opera singer mother, she grew up listening to American jazz and pop music, and began piano and dance lessons at the age of nine. At the Max Reinhardt seminary in Vienna, she was introduced to the stage, after consolidating her musical training in Salzburg, Cologne and Berlin.
In 1983 Andrew Lloyd-Webber offered her a part in the Viennese production of “Cats” and in 1985 she played the title role in the musical comedy “Peter Pan.” At the Stuttgart Stadtheater in 1986, she met Jérôme Savary, who invited her to play Sally Bowles in a production of “Cabaret” to be performed in Lyon, Düsseldorf, Rome and Paris. She received the Molière award for her performance in the Paris production at the Théâtre Mogador.
Lemper first became acquainted with Kurt Weill in a major production based on the life of the great composer. In 1987, she acted and sang in a show based on the life and repertoire of Weill to packed houses in New York, and it was this production that took her on her first world tour of the most prestigious theatres: Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, the Berliner Ensemble, Tokyo, Hong Kong, the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Paris Bouffes du Nord, the Jerusalem Festival, the Almeida Theatre, London, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Poliorama in Barcelona.
Lemper has received acclaim for her film performances as Marie-Antoinette in “L’Autrichienne,” by Pierre Granier-Deferre, as Ceres in Peter Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books” and in the role of Alberta in Robert Altman’s film “Prêt á Porter,” which she made while she was pregnant with her son Max (who was born in May 1994).
During 1995, she participated in the shooting of the Norman Jewison movie “Bogus,” starring Gerard Depardieu and Whoopi Goldberg. In 1996 she played the lead in an episode of the American TV series “Tales from the Crypt.”
Lemper lives in Paris with her husband, actor and comedian David Tabatsky and their two children, Max and Stella. Other performances in recent years include four prestigious productions: she sang Lola in the musical comedy “Der Blaue Engel” (The Blue Angel), staged in Berlin and Hamburg; she was the “voice” in a series of concerts put on by Nyman; she took part in a tour entitled “Homage to Cathy Berberian” under the leadership of Luciano Berio, during which she appeared at Milan’s La Scala and she sang “The Seven Deadly Sins” with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. Her activities extend to painting, with exhibitions in 1993 in Paris and Hamburg, journalism, with articles for Libération, Die Welt and The Guardian, and she has recently finished her first book.
Link to Wikipedia biography