Word: barlowe
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Scrap Tristan and put on Tosca. At the Met-which has fielded three Tristans for an act apiece rather than switch operas for a single performance-it was a disastrous suggestion. Schuyler Chapin, Gentele's successor as manager, rejected the idea, hired a minor singer named Klara Barlow to sing Isolde, and pulled together cast and production...
Vocally her gifts are of a somewhat lower order. The role is one of the most demanding in opera, and while Barlow is an expressive singer, she is weak in both the top and bottom of her range. Nilsson, in other words, need not worry, as Barlow admits with engaging candor. "Nilsson is a high dramatic soprano-the only honest one. The rest of us sing in our own way. But if you can get up there onstage and carry it off, instead of having opera houses closed for lack of great voices...
Walking into such a pizzicato brouhaha merely seemed to strengthen Barlow's resolve. Tristan, it turns out, is in her tea leaves or, rather, the numerology she is fascinated by. It was the first opera she ever attended, a Met performance with Astrid Varnay. When Barlow sang the role the first time herself, it was in Kiel, Germany, in 1967, and the singer she replaced was, of course, Varnay...
Skipped Sleep. It was a numerologist who made the somewhat mysterious suggestion that "Klara Barlow" would suit her better professionally than her own name, Alma Williams. She made her New York recital debut in 1954. Critics were enthusiastic, but her career did not develop. By 1961, twice divorced and with a nine-year-old daughter to support, she headed for Europe. In minor German opera houses she at last found regular work. And loneliness. "The towns are gray, and Germans stick to themselves," she says. "You have only your colleagues and new roles...
...head." What's left is usually plenty, although last September she had to skip a night's sleep to do the taxing lead role in Strauss's Elektra in Berlin on 17 hours' notice. Those days would seem to be over for Klara Barlow...