Ms. Lemper takes the stage like a bulldog: She bites in and holds on for the duration of the program, sometimes thrashing a bit, but never letting go. Her default position is a bitter, biting cynicism. Her voice has the sharp sourness of cigarette smoke, and like smoke she sometimes rolls it around in her mouth, savoring it; sometimes exhales it fiercely; sometimes lets it go as if not particularly noticing. Make no mistake: She notices. Every nuance of her performance is calculated.

Not a syllable, be it in German, French or English, is left untouched or unmined or unconsidered, until it is almost exhausting to listen to her. The patter is as much a part of the performance as the songs, which here included, in addition to a healthy dose of “Threepenny Opera,” two pieces from Weill’s French musical, “Marie Galante”; a Yiddish set; and a Brecht-Eisler song about a woman condemned for loving a Jewish man, “Ballade der Marie Sanders.” (Ms.

Lemper cut the word Judenhure, or “Jew’s whore,” from the title.) Ms. Lemper owns words, plays with them, caresses them and forces you to attend. “Blood” flows warm; “recruiting” is a harsh indictment. It is compelling, but also a barrage: each detail blends into a sameness, much as the brush strokes of a Klimt landscape in the museum upstairs join in an impenetrable, airless surface. But the painter George Grosz is a more apt analogy for Ms.

Lemper’s burlesque of Weimar: deliberately exaggerated, deliberately grotesque and trying to be all about sex without actually being very sexy. What she offers is a performance of sex, in the Weimar tradition, more alarming than come-hither, aggressively rolling her R’s at the hapless men at the tables nearest her. Her smoky voice is also impressive. At the bottom it opens up like a vast dark chasm, glinting with barely seen crystals.