Amber Iman and Eden Espinosa in Lempicka.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
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Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
Amber Iman and Eden Espinosa in Lempicka.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
Musicals can be inspired by a variety of sources. This spring alone, three shows based on books turned into films hit Broadway: Some water for the elephants, Notebook And The foreigners.
But the new musical Lempicka is truly an original.
Librettist Carson Kreitzer was inspired by the paintings of modernist art deco artist Tamara de Lempicka, better known in Europe than in the United States.
“I found this art book and I was like, oh, this isn’t a play,” Kreitzer said. “Words won’t be enough. There’s this elevation, this sharpness, this larger-than-life quality. And I knew it had to be a musical.”
So when she met composer Matt Gould, she gave him the art book. “I usually go there, it’s a terrible idea for a musical,” the composer recalls. “But I looked at these paintings and I said to myself: ‘This is incredible.’ Who is the guy who did this?
“‘And she said:’Her My name is Tamara de Lempicka.'”
Eden Espinosa as Lempicka in the new Broadway musical.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
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Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
Eden Espinosa as Lempicka in the new Broadway musical.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Lempicka
It was 14 years ago. Between readings and productions in regional theaters – not to mention the pandemic – it took time to Lempicka come to Broadway.
“I was recently reminded of Tamara de Lempicka’s quote,” Kreitzer said. “‘There are no miracles. There is only what we do.’ And if it takes 14 years, it takes 14 years. »
A colleague of the director Rachel Chavkin, Tony Award-winning director of Hadestownintroduced her to the musical about 10 years ago and she was won over.
“It had a story,” she recalls. “There were Bolsheviks. There was already love and this extraordinary score. And I fell completely in love with it!” She has directed several productions, including the Broadway version.
Glamorous and larger than life
A gallery technician from Sotheby’s auction house admires a 2009 painting by Tamara de Lempicka entitled Portrait of Marjorie Ferry from 1932.
Oli Scarff/Getty Images
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Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Born to a Russian Jewish father and a Polish mother, Lempicka’s real-life Tamara was glamorous and self-mythological; his life encapsulates the vast sweep of the first half of the 20th century.
She and her husband, who lived a privileged life together in St. Petersburg, fled Russia during the October Revolution to settle in Paris. There, she made a name for herself painting modernist portraits and nudes and became known for painting the “New Woman” – the nickname for those who were breaking gender roles by driving cars and cutting their hair . They explored socially and sexually, and Lempicka joined them.
“His sexual appetite was infamous and inspiring, I would say,” Chavkin said.
Marisa de Lempicka, who now runs the estate, said her great-grandmother had relationships with the men and women who were her role models. “She always said… ‘I chose the most beautiful people to be my models.'”
One of Lempicka’s most famous paintings is called Beautiful Rafaela, a sensual nude of a woman with one arm thrown behind her head, eyes closed.
“Rafaela is a woman’s body appreciated by a woman,” Kreitzer said, “and Tamara paints the curve of a stomach in a way that makes it feel like a breast.”
In the musical, Lempicka is in a love triangle with her husband and Rafaela, although historians are not actually sure if Tamara and Rafaela were lovers.
“We show Tamara in the relationship with her husband and also with Rafaela,” said Eden Espinosa, who plays Lempicka in the musical, “and how these gender norms and the way you’re supposed to behave with a person and the the other person, how it changes.
A survivor
Lempicka is not always portrayed as likable in the musical – she is more focused on her work than her family, and she does what she needs to do to survive. That’s on purpose, Chavkin said.
“We’re really allowing Tamara to be as flawed and complicated as any male protagonist has ever been allowed to be. And women very rarely are, because for many reasons we worry about whether the woman is likable?” And so you end up flattening character after character, when, of course, what makes good drama is often prickly. »
Lempicka, in all its beauty and prickliness, is currently playing on Broadway – and in recent decades, interest in Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings has been revived; they are collected by Madonna and others. A small exhibition of them is currently on display at Sotheby’s.
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