Born in the small German town of Munster, Ute Lemper quickly departed for the more salubrious environment of Vienna. From there, she apprenticed in a variety of light entertainment shows from London to Chicago and from Paris to New York. Her credibility as an intuitively dramatic and rather unique interpreter of material soon made itself clear with bravura roles in a broad range of musicals and one-woman Brecht/Weill and Dietrich shows. Lemper returns to Ireland with a superb new album to promote (Punishing Kiss), whereon she gamely tackles songs written by Philip Glass, Elvis Costello, Scott Walker, Nick Cave and Tom Waits. She performs (and boy, do we mean performs!) at Dublin's Olympia theatre today.