Klara Barlow

Klara Barlow, actually Alma Claire Williams ( born July 28, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York City; † January 20, 2008 in New York City ) was an American opera singer with the voice soprano.

Biography and artistic work

Williams worked as a secretary, clerk, receptionist and model before she aspired to an opera career. The stage name she chose, at the suggestion of a Zahlensymbolikers, who advised her career because of it. Your voice made for Cecile Jacobson in New York City train and had her concert debut as a coloratura soprano in 1954 in Carnegie Hall. Despite excellent reviews in America she could first build no commitment.

Therefore, she moved in 1961, divorced twice and caring for a nine year old daughter to Europe, where she first worked in Switzerland and developed gradually to a dramatic soprano. Finally her thereat professional opera debut took place at the Stadttheater Bern as Venus in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser in 1962. At the Municipal Theater Oberhausen she sang from 1963 two years the dramatic soprano repertoire. In 1965 she went to the Opernhaus Kiel, where she again worked one year.

In 1966 she moved to Walter Felsenstein's Komische Oper Berlin. Here she was at the reopening of the house of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. The production was recorded by DFF and broadcast live. This season she sang also other games with great success.

Then Barlow 1967-1969 went as a leading soprano at the Hessian State Theatre in Wiesbaden and in the coming year at the Zurich Opera House. Here are the heroines in the operas of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss and Verdi were their domain.

Your first professional opera performance in America, she had also only in those years, in 1969 in the title role of Verdi's Aida, the Portland Opera and the San Diego Opera, Opera ( Elizabeth in Tannhäuser ).

1967 Barlow sang her first Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Kiel, but only their Isolde 1968 at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, as a partner of Claude Heater as Tristan brought her in this role, the real breakthrough. The production was staged in Spoleto by the composer Gian Carlo Menotti as well as directed.

Then was the Isolde as their most important role they often sang in the next six years, with particular success at the Metropolitan Opera, as a partner of Jess Thomas as Tristan (1974); this production was again broadcast live on the radio. After Isolde Birgit Nilsson Barlow's interpretation was that of a new generation of singers, in which Isolde Barlow also acted as an attractive youthful woman in the sense of the drama authentic Actress.

Previously they had in 1971 already sung her debut as Leonore in Beethoven's Fidelio, with Robert Nagy as Florestan and William Dooley as Don Pizarro, and also sang Donna Anna here. More of her roles were sung there in the Marina Mnischek Boris Godunov (1975 ), Amelia in the Masked Ball ( 1975-1976 ) and the title role in Elektra (1975). In 1979, she finally sang at the Met Kurt Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

Multiple now she was still heard in various Wagnerian roles, including the Freia in Das Rheingold and Sieglinde in Die Walküre in the ring of Seattle Opera 1970-1972 and ibid. 1976, the Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung, a role she also in the Dallas Opera in 1981 afforded. But in 1972 she sang also the bel canto role of Mathilde in a concert performance of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell with Louis Quilico as Tell. In 1973, she ventured at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich debut as Elektra, as Einspringerin for a sick colleague with only 17 hours of preparation time. In 1974 she was experiencing at La Scala as a mirage in Sergei Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, as Leonore in Fidelio as.

1975 Barlow was to experience in a concert not only with the great Leonora 's aria, but also the final scene of Anna Bolena ( Donizetti ) and a staged presentation of the first monologue of Elektra.

In the 1970s, Barlow sang in addition to the German Opera, Berlin (1970 ), the Opéra National du Rhin (1970), the Houston Grand Opera ( 1970), the Vienna State Opera (1972 and 1974 ), Scottish Opera (1973 ) the Teatro Comunale di Bologna ( 1973), the Teatro Carlo Felice (1973 ), Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Turin ( 1974), the Lyric Opera of Chicago ( 1976-1977 ), the Cincinnati Opera ( 1978), and the Opera Company of Philadelphia (1981). More houses that Barlow had occurred the Budapest State Opera, the Théâtre du Capitole, Det Kongelige Teater in Copenhagen, the Canadian Opera Company, Opera Memphis, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Hamburg State Opera, Semperoper, and the Staatsoper Stuttgart. Among her roles, the Abigaile in Nabucco, Agathe in Der Freischütz, were the Elisabetta in Don Carlos, Elsa in Lohengrin, the Giulietta in Tales of Hoffmann, Minnie Falconer in La Fanciulla del West, the Senta in The Flying Dutchman, and finally the title roles in Arabella, Ariadne auf Naxos, Jenufa, Norma, Salome, Tosca and Turandot. Your Salome was also recorded from television CBC Television.

1985-1986 Barlow came back on in Europe, as Elektra and Leonora at the Theater Bremen and as Dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten in Bielefeld ( Director: John Dew ).

In 1987 she took over at Indiana University Bloomington professor of voice training, which she taught until 2002. Until the mid- 1990s, she had yet to experience on stage, also in world premieres.

Videos

• Don Giovanni ( with György Melis as Giovanni, Anna Barlow, Anny Schlemm as Elvira, Rudolf Asmus as Leporello, 1966); Director: Walter Felsenstein - DFF

Weblink

• Disco Graphical Notes and photos from Clare Barlow

• Opera singer
• University teachers ( Bloomington, Indiana)
• Soprano
• Americans
• Born in 1928
• Died in 2008
• Woman