20 Facts About Klara Barlow

Klara Barlow was an American opera singer who had an active international career from the mid-1960s to the 1990s.

Klara Barlow did not participate in any commercial audio recordings, although her voice is preserved on a few television and radio broadcasts made in Germany, Canada, and the United States.

Klara Barlow took the stage name "Klara Barlow" from a suggestion by a numerologist who told her that it would suit her better professionally.

Klara Barlow studied voice under Cecile Jacobson in New York City and made her professional recital debut as a coloratura soprano at Carnegie Hall in 1954.

Klara Barlow did however, sing with Giuseppina La Puma's highly respected amateur company, The Mascagni Opera.

Klara Barlow moved to Switzerland to pursue further studies in opera and it was there that she was directed into the dramatic repertory.

Klara Barlow finally made her professional opera debut as Venus in Richard Wagner' Tannhauser at the Stadttheater Bern in 1962.

Klara Barlow joined the roster of principal sopranos at the Stadttheater Oberhausen in 1963 where she sang for two seasons.

Klara Barlow next worked as a principal soprano at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden from 1967 to 1969 and then at the Opernhaus Zurich from 1969 to 1970.

Klara Barlow made her first opera appearances in the United States in 1969 as the title role in Verdi's Aida with the Portland Opera and at the San Diego Opera as Elizabeth in Tannhauser.

In 1967 Klara Barlow sang her first Isolde in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Kiel, a performance which didn't put her on the map but it did lead to an engagement to sing the part at the 1968 Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy opposite Claude Heater as Tristan.

Klara Barlow returned to the Met several more times during the 1970s, singing Marina in Boris Godunov, Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera, and the title role in Elektra.

Klara Barlow last sang with the Met as one of the denizens in the company's first-season run of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in 1979.

Klara Barlow sang Freia in Das Rheingold and Sieglinde in Die Walkure for Seattle Opera's productions of Wagner's Ring Cycle from 1970 to 1972.

Klara Barlow returned to Seattle in 1976 to portray Brunnhilde in Gotterdammerung, a role she sang with the Dallas Opera in 1981.

Klara Barlow is the kind of honest, solidly reliable singer, definite in intention and definite about the actual notes, that is becoming increasingly rare.

Klara Barlow plainly knew the meaning of everything she sang, and how to express it.

Klara Barlow portrayed leading roles at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Opera national du Rhin, the Houston Grand Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Scottish Opera, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Carlo Felice, the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Cincinnati Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia.

Klara Barlow recorded the role of Salome for CBC Television.

Klara Barlow notably portrayed Helen Pitts Douglass, the wife of Frederick Douglass, in the world premiere of Ulysses Kay and Donald Dorr's Frederick Douglass at the New Jersey State Opera in April 1991.