Each time Ute Lemper commands the stage, she unleashes ghosts of the past. Her distinctive contralto voice resurrects an era long past as her poetic repertoire recounts tales of lost loves, survival and passionate dreams. Her concert, titled “Last Tango in Berlin,” revisits the German cabaret songs of Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht, the French chansons of Edith Piaf and Belgian Jacques Brel and the tango-infused melodies of Argentine Astor Piazzolla. She is accompanied by a piano and bandoneon.

“Weill and Brecht are embedded in my history,” Lemper said. “Growing up in Germany in the ’60s and ’70s, I attended theaters featuring Weill’s ‘Three Penny Opera,’ and during a summer break in Salzburg, [Austria,] while in high school, I took a theater drama course about them. Brecht was celebrated as a great poet on a par with Tennessee Williams in this country. The style he created in the ’20s was not too subtle and suggests that he almost had to be an activist to represent his philosophies. He was a philosophical thinker, while Weill was a composer.