"When You Are Really Hungry, You Are Better Off in Rome": Ute Lemper on Paris, Piaf and the Concert Coming to RomeAhead of her performance at the Auditorium Parco della Musica on 20 April, the German-born cabaret legend speaks about French chanson, the dialogue between Rome and Paris, and why the songs of the broken universe still matter. The great figures of French chanson, Piaf, Brel, Barbara, Ferré, Trenet, each had a completely distinct relationship with darkness, with love, with the city. When you bring them together on one stage, how do you avoid making it feel like a greatest hits compilation rather than a coherent world? I am trying to channel the emotion and the existential undertone of the songs. They all have very poetic and specific storytelling. It is crucial to preserve the story and the character that tells the story. These are not heroic characters but rather outcasts and human beings in pain. Not privileged people but rather people that have experienced loss and loneliness. It is also a portrait of a certain time in Paris, when the word had a strong identity. In the cafes, people read out loud poetry, and the more broken down and cryptic a poet delivered his rhymes and thoughts, the more authentic. Jacques Prévert set to music by Joseph Kosma is a very specific and literary choice. What does poetry do to a performance that song alone cannot? The poetry brings not only the human being to life, with his fears, doubts and longings, but also expresses with all senses, smell, taste, eyesight, sound and skin, in all possible metaphors, life to the word and then to the music. Édith Piaf is probably the most impersonated singer in history, and the most dangerous to revisit. How do you approach her material without becoming a tribute act? I certainly do not try to mimic her or impersonate her. She has some wonderful songs that want to be interpreted forever. I just try to tell the story and sing the song with my own senses and sensibility, and here and there of course make reference and pay tribute to this great artist. The Rome date coincides with 70 years of the Rome-Paris twinning. Two cities that have spent centuries competing for the title of the world's most culturally consequential capital. What do you think they actually share, beyond the obvious? The two cities may have competed but deep down share and exchange historical and cultural flair with their density, chaos and brilliance. They are deeply connected as they are both at the heart of European history and geography. Both cities are the epitome of fashion and style, long grown and deeply embedded in their flamboyant lifestyles and exuberance. The cities had their different periods of blossoming and redesigning but carry pride in their old and new souls. The Italian pride is a little louder and more passionately Mediterranean, sometimes slightly vulgar, while the Parisian pride is slightly more arrogant and judgmental but always fine and delicate. Yet they are different but they spy on each other in wonder and envy for the next spectacular evening gowns, fashionable furniture, the wildest handbag design, the out-of-this-world stiletto shoe, or the biggest stars at their film festivals. The world loves both cities for their differences and their attractions. They sing their languages with different poetry. Europe needs both those hearts in its body and they pulse in harmony. And, well, when you are really hungry you are better off in Rome than Paris. When you are deeply in love you might prefer Paris. Rome audiences are famously demanding and very specific in their cultural loyalties. What does it mean to bring a show that is so deeply Parisian to a city that has its own equally fierce sense of identity? I have never sung Italian music, besides a tribute to Neapolitan songs. The audience knows that I come from a German, French, even New Yorker, jazz and Broadway tradition, and I have certainly developed a very personalised song culture with a great interest in telling a story in music with historical conscience and integrity. I myself lived many years in Paris. I had a life there and my first two children were born there. I am deeply connected to the cinema and the song tradition and feel that I also have some French blood running in my veins. But I connect the French songs to my own life and autobiography, which I will sometimes quote in Italian. The concert is a poetic journey that meets the human being, no matter what nationality. The French had an extraordinary scene of artists who were able to capture that spirit of the broken universe. Is there a Roman equivalent of chanson? A form that does the same emotional and social work in Italian culture that Brel and Piaf did in French? The Neapolitan songs were very much capturing this spirit. And of course you had singers like Callas, Dalida, Milva to enchant generations with their voices and emotions. You have spent your career working in a tradition, cabaret and chanson and Weimar-era theatre, that most of the entertainment industry had written off decades ago. What kept that tradition alive, and why does it still reach people? It is the simple act of performing in a purely human and not electronic dimension. With all its imperfections and emotions you can reach people in the heart and also evoke historical and even political context through the songs. We all know that history always in certain ways repeats itself and invents new devils with old paroles. The human condition always searches for love and identity, feels abandonment, makes mistakes, is easily seduced and easily manipulated. Women are still working on emancipating themselves from male dominance and searching for romance and romanticism while at the same time enjoying independence and power. The yin and yang of life goes on. The songs from past epochs tell it sometimes with more individual feeling than contemporary music. But the story of the human is to sing best when feeling pain and oppression, as an art of liberation and an expression of the deepest human experiences. The comparison to Marlene Dietrich follows you everywhere. Is it something you have made peace with, or does it still feel like a frame that obscures as much as it reveals? It was never a burden, always an honour to be compared to Marlene Dietrich, but it was a responsibility. Dietrich and Piaf are very different personalities and women. Dietrich was the designer of emancipated womanhood. Piaf was a victim of too much feeling and loss, a fragile bird meeting Dietrich, the manipulative predator, in opposition. Yet they were best friends and enjoyed the completion in their relationship. To channel both characters is a very intense task and process. Dietrich has the strong character but the weak voice, with a lot of attitude. Piaf has the weak heart with the strong voice and so much radiance. In my show about Dietrich I try to focus on the human tragedy and the isolated, lonely old woman that I encountered on the telephone in 1987, trapped in her apartment in Paris. I felt her melancholy and her bitterness about being outcast by the Germans and called a traitor to the fatherland until her death in 1992. She was in agony about this injustice and the horrible rejection by the Germans, while she was utterly sure that she had taken the right side in history, having fought against Nazi Germany as an American soldier. Instead of honouring her decision, the Germans had punished her for being anti-Nazi. History was painful and there she was, alone in her apartment in Paris for more than a decade, speaking to me, Ute, a young German woman at the start of her career. Dietrich enjoyed a moment of conversing in German and expressing her regrets and sorrows. You work across languages and cultures with unusual ease. Does a song change fundamentally when you translate it, or is there something in the music that travels intact? For me the story travels from language to language with a different sensibility to the word, but the message and integrity stay intact. It is like when I dream while sleeping, I sometimes do not remember the language I dreamed in but I remember the story. The emotion, the fear and the joy and the context. You have described your performances as blending music, literature, and memory. What is it about live performance specifically that allows those three things to happen at once in a way that recording never can? I am blending the music with my memory and thoughts, my own life and the city's memories. I catch the music in the air and the words of the poets. And let us please mention the amazing musicians who bring this painting to life together with me, on piano, bass and accordion. When you walk onto a stage in a new city for the first time, what are you reading in the room before you sing a single note? I search for calm and focus on the breathing of everyone in that space. I am grateful that the audience is ready to take a journey with me, and I fall into the deep to be, to sing, to laugh and to cry. I usually start with the word, and then the song evolves out of the word. Ute Lemper performs Paris Paris at the Sala Petrassi, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, on Monday 20 April 2026 at 20:00. Tickets are available at ticketone.it.