La douleur passe, la beauté reste (c) Pierre-Auguste Renoir

What a power
made me rise
slowly, against my will,
from the drifts of eternal snow?
Do not you see,
that my limbs bend badly,
that I'm monstrously old
and I cannot bear this evil frost.
I can barely make a move
or inhale.
I can barely make a move
or inhale.
Let me let me
freeze again ...
Let me let me
freeze to death again!

Klaus Nomi sang it, already knowing that he was dying of AIDS. Farewell song.
(January 24, 1944 - August 6, 1983)
An article about the countertenor Klaus Nomi. Published in Persona magazine in 2008.

"He come from outer space to save the human race" ...
He was the first to combine classical opera and cabaret music of the 30s of the last century. He was the first to make science fiction a pop culture subject. And he was also the first world celebrity to die of AIDS. The underground star of the 70s and 80s, German countertenor Klaus Nomi.
The musical culture of the 70s and early 80s ran from reality into collage and synthetic electronic music, the most eccentric figures received cult status - Nomi was one of the brightest. And it remains so to this day, despite the fact that a quarter of a century has passed since he died. However ... "Nomi is definitely an alien from Mars, although some argue that he flew to America from West Berlin," Andy Warhol said about him. And he knew a lot about it. Therefore ... let's take the hypothesis as an axiom - probably Nomi just returned to his mysterious homeland, leaving behind in this world four studio albums, a lot of clips, photographs, as well as admirers around the world. Perhaps, only in the crazy 70s could this amazing person-phenomenon, a tragic "alien" appear - the one who sang pop music like opera and brought opera to club music. He went on stage in half-demon, half-Pierrot make-up, amazed the audience with unnaturally angular movements, a face-mask and futuristic costumes, and sang Wagner's arias and disco numbers in the voice of a "drunken opera diva", to get the timbre of which he specially exhausted himself with endless exercises. His career was very short, but in terms of brightness, it exceeded all conceivable and inconceivable limits.
Born in 1944 in Bavaria, Klaus Sperbere, the owner of the rarest male voice - the countertenor (only castrates sang above!), Dreamed of singing in opera since childhood. But at that time they could not find a use for his unique voice, the impresario, who were stunned by the fact that he in all seriousness began to sing in a female voice, after the very first listening they kicked him out the door. Later, this former doorkeeper of the Berlin Opera and chef in an American pastry shop became one of the most prominent figures in the pop decadence of the early 80s and one of the symbols of the New Wave. He left for New York, where he became Klaus Nomi, a fragile porcelain alien doll, singing like a venerable opera diva - he was, after all, a singer with an opera school. Nomi amazed the underground audience with his eccentric vocals, performing opera arias with deliberate theatricality and an accentuated German accent, appearing on stage in the form of a human or an alien, in strange "architectural" costumes made of leather and plastic, with strange gestures reminiscent of the movements of a revived robot ... His first performance took place in a rock club, and "when Nomi sang an operatic aria among the clownery and rock and roll numbers, all these young rock and rolllers were dumbfounded and listened with bated breath," recalls the art director of the club "Max", in which the debut of the future star took place. Many did not believe that it was really a person singing, that this was not artificial sound processing. His range from baritone to soprano really boggled the imagination, going beyond any idea of \u200b\u200bthe possibilities of the human voice, and in his shiny fancy plastic suits, with blue-black hair, white mask-face and pomaded lips, Klaus looked like a real living toy. "I met him while walking around New York," says one of his acquaintances, "and instantly recognized him by his electric blue coat and a thick layer of makeup on his face in broad daylight." Nomi himself argued that a man without makeup is like a cake without icing. Unpalatable and uninteresting: "The decision to use decorative cosmetics was quite risky, because a painted man looks extremely strange in the eyes of the masses! My mother came to me two years ago, and was shocked! Seeing my nails and lips painted black, she said:" You you look like the Devil - I can't believe it! ", to which I replied:" I am the Devil! "
It was fashionable in those days to be a freak - but he was a freak among freaks. Seeing him, people usually exclaimed not even "who is this?", But "WHAT is this?" It is not surprising that the extraordinary character was noticed by the legendary David Bowie, inviting him to perform together on television as a backing vocalist. Speaking frankly, Nomi in this performance, by his appearance alone, inspired more interest than the worn out Ziggy at that time. It was said that this "alien" would surely outshine Bowie if he lived longer.
The sign of the era of the 70s was the deliberately declared androgyny - androgyny not in the sense of sexuality, but primarily in terms of style. Any real artist is androgynous, since he simply needs to combine the sought-after principles, to contain the masculine and feminine equally - this is the ideal of an absolute artist. The first to elevate this to philosophy and aesthetics was Andy Warhol. After him came David Bowie, but the image of Ziggy - a weird alien - was more an expression of his slightly corny musical style than a serious inner concept. Nevertheless, Bowie was one of the first who decided to blur the boundaries of his gender, while not being either explicitly bisexual or explicitly asexual (although the operational press immediately recorded Nomi as his lover!). It is unlikely that he set himself the task of creating an image for life - extravagance in behavior and style of clothing served rather as a means to draw attention to his songs. Nomi took his mask much more seriously. Everyone around almost believed that he was an alien - but most importantly, the singer himself began to believe in it. Furnishing your stage performances in the most effective and mysterious way. Appearing on the street with security so that no one could touch him and feel that he is the same person as everyone else, he completely obeyed the rules that the legend created by him obliged him to follow ...
His face looked out from the covers of all magazines, including the cover of Japan's Voque, he ran crazy advertising campaigns for the Fiorucci chain of stores, playing a mannequin in a window window all day long and shocking visitors. He has performed operatic roles in films by Peter Greenaway and worked with the genius co-director, composer Michael Nyman. But, despite his immense popularity in narrow circles, and working with many celebrities, Nomi desperately hid from any advertising of himself, preferring to remain a free artist. Therefore, despite his cult status and many performances, wide fame never came to him. Record labels were afraid to sign such an artist ahead of his time. As a result, leaving his original team and somewhat adapting the musical component to the tastes of ordinary people, Nomi signed a contract with RCA, gaining fame in Europe, but at the dawn, as it seemed then, of real glory, he died from the "plague of the 20th century" , after a very short time, will take the lives of many more geniuses ...
He died in New York on September 6, 83rd at the age of 39, and shortly before his death he sang the famous Cold Song aria from Henry Purcell's King Arthur at the Classic Rock Nights in Munich. Those who have seen the film "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" will recognize the theme song, reworked by Michael Nyman into the "Memorial" in memory of the fans who died in the 1985 brawl, and subsequently used in the film by Peter Greenaway. A more tragic piece of music is hard to imagine. The aria, written for a man-baritone, performed by a man, but with a woman's voice, turned into a spiritual testament and aesthetic manifestation of a dying androgyne. There is a recording of this performance, widely circulated on the Internet: on the recording, Klaus Nomi is already terminally ill, and in fact is singing a requiem to himself. The final refrain of the aria, in the context of Nomi's fate, sounds especially tragic:

Let me, let me,
Let me, let me,
Freeze again ...
Let me, let me,
Freeze again to death!

The desire to be frozen, protected from life, the feeling of one's own irrelevance are the main moods, which were expressed in different ways by androgynes. Klaus Nomi is no exception. As a result, fate played a truly postmodern joke with him: for many, Nomi is known precisely for being the first celebrity to die of AIDS ...
Like many geniuses, he was never appreciated during his lifetime. Like many geniuses, after his death he became an object of worship among creative personalities with difficult tastes: it is believed that the clown in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" is copied from Nomi. His songs and baroque arias, which he also performed in his time, served as material for the musical performance "Dedication to Klaus Nomi" by Olga Neuwirth, one of the most prominent contemporary Austrian composers. And in 2004, a film based on the biography of this miracle man, "The Nomi Song", was released in Germany. It ends with a dialogue quote from an old science fiction movie:
- He won't come back again?
- Now people are not yet ready for his arrival. When they are ready, he will return.
Little is required of us. Just be ready for the miracle.
"I like to live in a world where he was and is partly still present," writes one of the modern Internet bloggers about him. I just have to join.

The author sincerely regrets that Klaus Nomi's audio CD cannot be attached to the magazine. Because this is the case when it is better to hear a hundred times.

*
Before his death, Dido sings his last aria "When I am laid in Earth", also known as "Dido's Lament". Dying, Dido asks the cupids to scatter rose petals on her grave, soft and tender as her heart.

Thy hand, belinda; darkness shades me:
On thy bosom let me rest:
More I would, but death invades me:
Death is now a welcome guest.
No trouble, no trouble
in thy breast,
When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble
in thy breast;
Remember me,
but forget my fate.
-
There is no grave. Was cremated. And the ashes are supposedly scattered over New York.

Klaus Nomi (Klaus Nomi), real name Klaus Sperber (German Klaus Sperber), January 24, 1944, Immenstadt im Allgäu - August 6, 1983, New York) - American singer of German descent, one of the first victims of AIDS among celebrities. Known for his enchanting performances, including with David Bowie, extraordinary makeup, operatic vocals and talent. Nomi exhausted himself with endless exercises ... Read all

Klaus Nomi (Klaus Nomi), real name Klaus Sperber (German Klaus Sperber), January 24, 1944, Immenstadt im Allgäu - August 6, 1983, New York) - American singer of German descent, one of the first victims of AIDS among celebrities. Known for his enchanting performances, including with David Bowie, extraordinary makeup, operatic vocals and talent. Nomi exhausted himself with endless exercises to achieve the timbre of a drunken opera diva. Like many geniuses, he was never appreciated during his lifetime. After his death, he became an object of worship among creative personalities with difficult tastes (it is believed that the clown in Lynch's "Lost Highway" is copied from Nomi). In 1982, Klaus Nomi sang Henry Purcell's song "The Cold Song". A few years later, Nyman uses this song in "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover."

Olga Neuwirth dedicated Hommage à Klaus Nomi to the memory of the singer for countertenor and chamber ensemble (1998).

Discography
Albums
1981 - Klaus Nomi
1982 - Simple Man
1983 - Encore
1986 - In Concert
Singles
You Don’t Own Me / Falling in Love Again (1981)
Nomi Song / Cold Song (1982)
Lightning Strikes / Falling in Love Again (1982)
Simple Man / Death (1982)
Ding Dong / ICUROK (1982)
ICUROK / Ding Dong
Za Bak Daz / Silent Night (1998)

(real name Klaus Sperber; 1944 - 1983) - American singer (counter-tenor), who created a unique image that included the circus (the strongest intuition of the late 19th - early 20th centuries), and classical opera, and the German cabaret of the mid-20th century, and the informal search for American art of the 1960s. To a large extent, his performances were in the nature of performances.
In this post I specifically tried to collect both his "live" performances (live), and his clips, so that you feel that this is not only a talented singer with a unique voice, but also a wonderful actor.

Klaus was born on January 24, 1944 in Immenstadt im Allgäu, in the Bavarian Alps. He spent his childhood in West Germany (West Berlin). As a child, he took part in opera productions at the Berlin Opera. As a teenager, he attended the Berlin School of Music. Later he worked as a ticket collector at the Berlin Opera. His first public vocal work was "Bastian" by Mozart in Bern (Switzerland).

Delilah's aria from the opera "Samson and Delilah" by Saint-Saens

Klaus moved to New York in 1972 or 1973. He first worked as a cook at the Cordon Bleu bakery and as a baker working with Katy Kattleman (Katy K). Klaus once participated in a cooking program on the New York City cable television channel with Glenn O "Brian. In 1976 he began taking vocal lessons.

You Don "t Own Me

RJ Collingwood, in his major work on aesthetics, The Principles of Art (1938), states: "The masses of moviegoers and magazine readers cannot be exalted by offering them ... the aristocratic entertainment of centuries past. This is usually called" carrying art to the people ", but this is a mousetrap: what is carried to the people also turns out to be entertainment, elegantly worked by Shakespeare or Purcell to amuse the Elizabethan audience or the audience of the Restoration era. Now, despite all the genius of the authors, these works are much less entertaining than cartoons about Mickey Mouse and jazz concerts, unless the audience has previously undergone labor-intensive training that allows them to enjoy such works "(cited in: Gordon Graham" Philosophy of Art ", M., 2004, p. 19).

But Klaus Nomi brilliantly refutes this thesis of Collingwood, turning the music of Purcell (an English composer of the 17th century) into a completely modern entertainment!

The cold song

The character "Klaus Nomi" was coined in 1978 by dancer Adrian. The name "Nomi" was an anagram of the name of the scientific journal OMNI. Nomi was featured at Irwin Plea's club NY City during the New Vaudeville Wave four evening branches.

Nomi song

Lightning strikes

Klaus Nomi has created an amazing synthesis of classic opera, German cabaret of the 1930s, America of the 1960s and synthesizers of the 21st century, embodied in the image of both a touching clown and a futuristic alien robot.

Simple man
His English simple man sounds like "simple man" (in German style)), until the end of his life he did not get rid of the strong German accent, and most likely, quite deliberately did not want to get rid of it.

The world recognized Klaus Nomi on December 15, 1979, when he appeared with David Bowie on NBC television on Saturday Night Life.
During Nomi's lifetime, only two albums were released: "Klaus Nomi" and "Simple man".

Ding Dong ... The Witch Is Dead!

Group member Christian Hoffman recalls: “Klaus was both a magical painted robot and a mask of the Kabuki theater. His style is a medieval interpretation of the 21st century through the prism of Berlin in 1929. He ranged from an operatic soprano to a Prussian general. He was a visionary above all. He said that the future depends on the needs of the artist himself: he decides how he should live, and he lives it every minute. Klaus, the man of the future, seemed to invite with his life: “You see me. And you can do it too. "His vision was naive, strange, almost stupid, but genuine in its purity and innocence. Even in its funniest (" Lightnin strikes ") or quiveringly sublime (" Dido's Lament "Purcell), there was the presence of the apocalypse. For Klaus, the apocalypse was a metaphor for purification. Like an optimistic eccentric surrounded by cynical alienated people, he still dared to believe in a better world. "

Dido's Lament from G. Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas"
Before his death, Dido sings his last aria "When I am laid in Earth", also known as "Dido's Lament". Dying, Dido asks the cupids to scatter rose petals on her grave, soft and tender as her heart.

Can "t Help Falling in Love
Feel the range! ..

Nomi says: “I approach everything completely detached. This is the only way that allows me to break the rules. After all, my past is a German classical opera ... It would be disgusting for me to sing an operatic aria for soprano in falsetto in Germany. It was the rule that I broke. ... I am helped by the reality, which is bursting at all the seams, which, at first glance, has no rules at all, but in fact is as conservative as classical music. ... Sometimes I sing very honestly really believing the words ... But I always try to express the operatic aria as reincarnation as possible. Usually I really go beyond the song and give it different meanings. ... I use the experience I know and put it in a different environment. "

After the fall
Optimistic song ...))

"I've always loved rock 'n' roll, really. For me, when I was twelve, the biggest name in rock 'n' roll was Elvis Presley. I bought him King Kreol. I hid it, but my mother found She went to a record store where I bought it and traded it for opera arias sung by Maria Callas. I generally didn’t mind. Every time I bought a rock 'n' roll reviewer, I bought a classical music reviewer. , and other...".

Total eclipse

By early 1983, it was discovered that Klaus was seriously ill. Friends raised money for his treatment. But according to some reports on August 6, and according to other reports on August 8, 1983, Klaus Nomi died of AIDS. He was 39 years old.

He died in New York on September 6, 83rd at the age of 39, and shortly before his death he sang the famous Cold Song aria from Henry Purcell's King Arthur at the Classic Rock Nights in Munich. Those who have seen the film "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" will recognize the theme song, reworked by Michael Nyman into the "Memorial" in memory of the fans who died in the 1985 fight, and subsequently used in the film by Peter Greenaway.
A more tragic piece of music is hard to imagine. The aria, written for a man-baritone, performed by a man, but with a woman's voice, became a spiritual testament and aesthetic manifestation of a dying androgyne.
There is a recording of this performance, widely circulated on the Internet: on the recording, Klaus Nomi is already terminally ill, and in fact is singing a requiem to himself. The final refrain of the aria, in the context of Nomi's fate, sounds especially tragic:

Freeze again to death!

The desire to be frozen, protected from life, the feeling of one's own irrelevance are the main moods, expressed in different ways by androgynes. Klaus Nomi is no exception. As a result, fate played a truly postmodern joke with him: for many, Nomi is known precisely for being the first celebrity to die of AIDS ...

So...
He was the first to combine classical opera and cabaret music of the 30s of the last century. He was the first to make science fiction a pop culture subject. And he was also the first world celebrity to die of AIDS. The underground star of the 70s and 80s, German countertenor Klaus Nomi.

Klaus Nomi's real name is Klaus Sperber
He was born on January 24, 1944 in Immenstadt im Allgäu, in the Bavarian Alps. He was the only child in the family, raised by a single mother. He spent his childhood in West Germany (West Berlin). As a child, he took part in opera productions at the Berlin Opera. As a teenager, he attended the Berlin School of Music.
And although Klaus early discovered his vocal talent, he first had to learn to be a pastry chef.
In the 60s, he worked as an extra in a theater in Essen, then moved to Berlin, where he received a vocal education. At the same time he worked in the opera house as a ticket collector. But after the end of the performances, Klaus sometimes went up on stage and sang for his colleagues. He also performed with classic arias in the Kleist Casino nightclub, which was attended mainly by homosexuals. Despite all his efforts, no theater took him to the troupe.

In 1972, having lost hope of making his way to Germany, Sperber moved to New York, where he agreed to any job.
He first worked as a chef at the Cordon Bleu bakery, then together with Katy Kattleman he created an independent baking company.
Klaus moved in the liberal homosexual crowd. Klaus Nomi was friends with a young dancer named Andrian Richards, who developed a certain robot dance.
He again began to take singing lessons and learned to sing in a very high voice, similar in timbre to a woman's, to a soprano. But he could not find a job as a countertenor either.
His pseudonym Nomi is remade from the Latin word omni - "everyone" or "all". That was the name of a popular science magazine, well, in general, the word was good.
In two years, Nomi was able to turn from a poor pastry chef into a star. He created a unique, unrepeatable style that included the circus (the strongest intuition of the late 19th - early 20th centuries), classical opera, German cabaret of the mid-20th century and the informal search for American art of the 1960s. Klaus gathered various groups of artists and performers, whose list included different time Joe Arias, Kenny Scharf, Kate Harring, Jean-Michael Basquiat and John McLaughlin.

His first performance took place in a rock club, and "when Nomi sang an operatic aria among the clownery and rock and roll numbers, all these young rock and rolllers were dumbfounded and listened with bated breath," recalls the art director of the club "Max", in which the debut of the future star took place.
Dressed in a tight-fitting alien suit from outer space, he sang the aria "My Heart Opens to the Sound of Your Voice" from Saint-Saens's opera "Samson and Delilah."
The aria ended with chaotic strobe lights, explosions of fake smoke, and loud electronic sound effects. The alien disappeared into white clouds of smoke, and when the smoke cleared, there was no one on the stage.
After performing at the Mudd Club, Klaus saw that David Bowie was also in the hall. So their acquaintance took place.

This performance became a real sensation, the singer received invitations to perform in numerous clubs in New York. There, in the late 70s, musical taste turned towards punk and New Wave, the era of cold and hard synthesizer sounds began.
Many did not believe that it was really a person singing, that this was not artificial sound processing.
His range from baritone to soprano really boggled the imagination, going beyond any idea of \u200b\u200bthe possibilities of the human voice, and in his shiny fancy plastic suits, with blue-black hair, white mask-face and pomaded lips, Klaus looked like a real living toy.

The sign of the era of the 70s was the deliberately declared androgyny - androgyny not in the sense of sexuality, but primarily in terms of style. Any real artist is androgynous, since he simply needs to combine the sought-after principles, to contain the masculine and feminine equally - this is the ideal of an absolute artist. The first to elevate this to philosophy and aesthetics was Andy Warhol.
After him came David Bowie, but the image of Ziggy - a weird alien - was more an expression of his slightly corny musical style than a serious inner concept. Nevertheless, Bowie was one of the first who decided to blur the boundaries of his gender, while not being either explicitly bisexual or explicitly asexual (although the operational press immediately recorded Nomi as his lover!)
Speaking frankly, Nomi in this performance, by his appearance alone, inspired more interest than the worn out Ziggy at that time. It was said that this "alien" would surely outshine Bowie if he lived longer.

In 1979, David Bowie took Klaus with him to television, inviting him to perform together as a backing vocalist, he borrowed Nomi's costume and makeup.

"December 15, 1979. David Bowie appears on stage, dressed in a plastic triangular suit. He was surrounded by two" eccentrics "who put Bowie on the microphone, and themselves took the position of backing vocals. One of them made the audience flinch with surprise: a whitewashed face, a pointed nose, unblinking eyes, a clown hairstyle ... And when Bowie began to sing, this “clown” also had the audacity to drown out the singer's singing with his piercing, crystal clear operatic soprano.

Bowie, Nomi and Arias performed three songs on Saturday Night Live: "The man who sold the world", "TVC15" and "Boys Keep Swinging"

This is how the whole world recognized Klaus Nomi. "

After that, Klaus began to be invited to television for one - but as, so to speak, a singing pastry chef.
He showed off his famous cakes and cookies, sang arias, disco hits, old rock and rolls.

Klaus Nomi later signed a contract with RCA studio. There he recorded his first album, Klaus Nomi (1981). In 1980-1981 he went on tour, made video clips and immediately returned to the studio, where he recorded his second album entitled "Simple man" (1982).

Joe Aria recalls: “Then Klaus and I had a fight. I started writing my own songs, which made him angry. He said, “You start working on your own and doing your job. I think you should leave me. " Many of his friends left him. "

The "Nomi Band" (which included Klaus, Joe Arias and Kenny Scharf, who were his dancers, as well as various musicians from New York) disbanded, and Klaus began working with session musicians and hired dancers.

At the same time, he looked so unusual that the audience went into a rage even before Klaus opened his mouth and began to sing.
He went on stage in half-demon, half-Pierrot make-up, amazed the audience with unnaturally angular movements, a face-mask and futuristic costumes, and sang Wagner's arias and disco numbers in the voice of a "drunken opera diva", to get the timbre of which he specially exhausted himself with endless exercises.

His makeup was reminiscent of Japanese kabuki theater, and his costume was reminiscent of the cubist theater of the 1920s: instead of a jacket, there was a huge black triangle with wide shoulders, on a white chest there was a bow tie, also disproportionately large.
Nomi himself argued that a man without makeup is like a cake without icing. Unpalatable and uninteresting: "The decision to use decorative cosmetics was quite risky, because a painted man looks extremely strange in the eyes of the masses! My mother came to me two years ago, and was shocked! Seeing my nails and lips painted with black, she said:" You you look like the Devil - I can't believe it! ", to which I replied:" I am the Devil! "
It amazed her even more. "

In one of the interviews, he formulated his worldview as follows: “I try to look as alien as possible. I want to emphasize one thing: I approach everything as an absolute outsider. This is the only way I can break all the rules. You remember that there is a very strange story behind me - a German classical opera? .. It helped me that pop and rock, which are usually thought of as having no rules, are actually just as conservative as classical music. what I do is a double shock. The difference is that the punk audience admires when I shock them. "

Klaus Nomi's first own single was released in 1980, and soon his first appearance on German television took place. During his lifetime, the musician recorded only two studio records.

It is unlikely that he set himself the task of creating an image for life - extravagance in behavior and style of clothing served rather as a means to draw attention to his songs. Much more serious from rushed to his Nomi mask. Everyone around almost believed that he was an alien - but most importantly, the singer himself began to believe in it.

Furnishing your stage performances in the most effective and mysterious way. Appearing on the street with guards so that no one could touch him and feel that he is the same person as everyone else, he completely obeyed the rules that the legend created by him obliged him to follow ...

Klaus Nomi: “I've always loved rock 'n' roll, really. When I was twelve years old, the biggest name in rock and roll for me was Elvis Presley. I once stole my mom's money and bought Presley's King Creole. I hid it from my mother and hid the record in the basement, but she found it. She hated rock and roll, and so she went to the same store where I bought it and traded it for a collection of Maria Callas opera arias. I didn't mind. On the contrary, I was very pleased. And every time I bought rock and roll, I also bought an opera. I liked both. "

He loved the classics, and his splashes of opera arias were a tribute to this love, and a passion for some opera divas ...

“I've always dreamed of seeing Maria Callas live. In Germany, there is one custom that is performed on New Year's Eve. You need to melt a piece of metal over a candle, and then pour cold water over it. It turns out a strange stain. The idea is that everyone judges for himself what this stain means. It turned out as if two people were looking at each other, and, of course, it was Maria and me. And so, three months later, it was announced that Maria was coming to Germany with a concert. I was insanely happy. At the concert, I jumped on the stage and was very close in front of her. I almost fainted from all the feelings that overwhelmed me at that moment. I looked into her eyes and it was like a fire burning in me ... The next day I went to the vocal teacher and started singing professionally, and every time I sing Delilah's aria, I sing it in honor of Callas. "

In fact, he became Vertinsky of his time and of that generation, with his myths, secrets, rumors, and extravagance that some took cheers, while others branded. As it was accurately called in the open spaces of the blogosphere - Vertinsky of the disco era.

Klaus, and, for example, Vertinsky, in the image of Pierrot

In 1982, Klaus was diagnosed with AIDS, then an almost unknown disease.

At the end of the year he toured Europe and again appeared on several German television programs. Leaving Germany, the musician knew that he would never return here.
Returning to New York in early 1983, Nomi shocked his old friends with his appearance. “He was always thin,” Ariy says, “but I clearly remember that Klaus goes to the party looking like a skeleton. He complained of fatigue and the flu. The doctors wondered what was wrong with him. Then he had difficulty breathing and was taken to the hospital. "

Doctors discovered that his immune system had collapsed, and they also discovered a rare form of skin cancer erupting from his body - Kaposi's sarcoma. Then they did not yet know that it was connected with AIDS.

“They forced me to put on a plastic bag when I visited him,” recalls Joe Aria, “I did not touch him. After a few weeks, he got a little better and was strong enough to walk. So he left the hospital and went home.

Klaus sat in his apartment, watched videos and photographs of himself, saying: "Look at this, this is what I did - now it's all gone ...".

He switched to a vegetarian diet. He also started taking Interferon, but this only made him worse. Herpes sprang up all over his body, and the corners of his eyes turned purple. He laughed at himself and joked, pointing to his body, disfigured by the disease. He told me: "Call me just dot Nomi."

In the summer he returned to the hospital, but the doctors could do nothing to help him. He could not eat due to stomach ulcers.

Joe Aria: “He looked like a monster. It was very painful for me to look at him ... I so wanted him to get better. I had a dream that Klaus got stronger and returned to the stage, but he had to hide all the time, like the Phantom of the Opera. He laughed, he liked the idea. And, indeed, he felt better for a while. I spoke to him on the night of the fifth of August. He told me, “Joe, what am I going to do? They don't want to keep me in the hospital anymore. They turned off all appliances. I have to stop it all because it is really useless. " I was going to go to him on Saturday morning, but the hospital called me and said that Klaus Nomi died in his sleep that night. "

He died in 1983.

Klaus Nomi's takeoff was short, but very bright. Nomi remains one of the strangest and most eccentric figures in pop history.

Like many geniuses, he was never appreciated during his lifetime. Like many geniuses, after his death he became an object of worship among creative personalities with difficult tastes: it is believed that the clown in "Blue Velvet" by David Lynch is copied from Nomi.

His songs and baroque arias, which he also performed in his time, served as material for the musical performance "Dedication to Klaus Nomi" by Olga Neuwirth, one of the most prominent contemporary Austrian composers.
And in 2004, a film based on the biography of this miracle man, "The Nomi Song", was released in Germany.
It ends with a dialogue quote from an old science fiction movie:

Is he not coming back again?

Now people are not yet ready for his arrival. When they are ready, he will return.

Klaus Nomi (Klaus nomi), real name Klaus Sperber (it. Klaus sperber), January 24, Immenstadt im Allgäu, Third Reich - August 6, New York, USA) is an American singer of German descent, one of the first victims of AIDS.

Opera and popular music

The desire to combine the classical operatic repertoire with the popular rhythms of the 1950s (and later the 1960s and 1970s) began in Klaus Nomi from childhood. In his interview, such significant episodes were recorded:

Creative credo

Klaus Nomi specifically emphasized his resemblance to a doll or a puppet. To enhance the otherworldliness of his image, he applied a thick layer of actor's makeup: he absolutely white face contrasted with dark lips and eyebrows. The artistic mask he created was a direct reference to Eastern culture, in particular to the Japanese Kabuki theater. The costume, on the other hand, was made in a purely European futuristic style, dating back to the Cubist theater of the 1920s. However, the dress, which was customary for the beginning of the twentieth century, was significantly transformed and presented in a grotesque manner. All the details of the costume were disproportionately large and were more reminiscent of clothing than fulfilling its purpose. For example, instead of a jacket, Klaus Nomi used a huge black triangle with exorbitantly wide shoulders, and a flat bow tie emphasized the rigidity of his image. Klaus Nomi was not the first to experiment with the image of the singer “out of this world”. Before him, such reincarnations were shown to the audience by the British David Bowie and Peter Gabriel, as well as the German musical group Kraftwerk.

In an interview, Klaus Nomi formulated his artistic credo as follows:

Discography

Albums

• 1981 - Klaus Nomi
• 1982 - Simple Man
• 1983 - Encore!
• 2007 - Za Bakdaz (Published as "The Unfinished Opera by Klaus Nomi")

Singles

• You Don "t Own Me / Falling in Love Again (1981)
• Nomi Song / Cold Song (1982)
• Lightning Strikes / Falling in Love Again (1982)
• Simple Man / Death (1982)
• Ding Dong / ICUROK (1982)
• ICUROK / Ding Dong
• Za Bak Daz / Silent Night (1998)

In media culture

• Klaus appeared in the last episode of the second season of Ventura Brothers alongside Iggy Pop. They were the main henchmen of the Phantom Without Limbs. Nomi's main weapon is his high-pitched voice, which he himself was killed by Soverin, the head of the Guild of Evil Intentions.
• In François Ozon's film A New Girlfriend (2014), the love scene of the main characters is accompanied by Delilah's aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” (My heart opens with the sound of your voice) from Saint-Saens's opera “Samson and Delilah”. One of the best interpretations of this aria is recognized as the performance of Maria Callas. But Ozone uses a version of the aria recorded by Klaus Nomi in 1981. This directorial technique works to reveal the idea of \u200b\u200bthe film, the main character of which, David, is in search of his sexual identity and comes on a date with his beloved in a female form. The expressive manner of singing by Klaus Nomi (a man with a female voice) gives the scene with the two “women” a special drama.

Memory

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An excerpt characterizing Nomi, Klaus

Prince Andrew stayed in Brunne with his friend, the Russian diplomat Bilibin.
"Ah, dear prince, there is no more pleasant guest," said Bilibin, going out to meet Prince Andrey. - Franz, the prince's things to my bedroom! - he turned to the servant who saw Bolkonsky off. - What, a herald of victory? Perfectly. And I am sitting sick, as you can see.
Prince Andrey, having washed and dressed, went into the luxurious office of the diplomat and sat down to the prepared dinner. Bilibin calmly sat down by the fireplace.
Prince Andrew, not only after his journey, but also after the whole campaign, during which he was deprived of all the comforts of purity and grace of life, experienced a pleasant feeling of relaxation amid those luxurious living conditions to which he was accustomed from childhood. In addition, after the Austrian reception, he was pleased to speak, at least not in Russian (they spoke French), but with a Russian man who, he assumed, shared a general Russian disgust (now felt especially vividly) for the Austrians.
Bilibin was a man of about thirty-five, single, of the same company with Prince Andrey. They had known each other back in Petersburg, but they got to know each other even better on the last visit of Prince Andrey to Vienna with Kutuzov. As Prince Andrey was a young man promising to go far in the military field, so, and even more, promised Bilibin in the diplomatic one. He was still a young man, but already a middle-aged diplomat, since he began serving at the age of sixteen, was in Paris, in Copenhagen and now occupied a rather significant position in Vienna. Both the chancellor and our envoy in Vienna knew him and treasured him. He was not one of that large number of diplomats who must have only negative dignities, not do well-known things and speak French in order to be very good diplomats; he was one of those diplomats who love and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he sometimes spent nights at his desk. He worked equally well, whatever the essence of the job. He was not interested in the question "why?", But the question "how?" What the diplomatic affair consisted of, he didn't care; but to draw up skillfully, neatly and gracefully a circular, memorandum, or report — in this he found great pleasure. Bilibin's merits were valued, in addition to written works, also for his art of addressing and speaking in the highest spheres.
Bilibin loved conversation as much as he loved work, only when the conversation could be gracefully witty. In society, he constantly waited for an opportunity to say something wonderful and entered into a conversation only under these conditions. Bilibin's conversation was constantly interspersed with originally witty, complete phrases of common interest.
These phrases were made in Bilibin's internal laboratory, as if on purpose, of a portable nature, so that insignificant secular people could conveniently memorize them and transfer them from living rooms to living rooms. Indeed, les mots de Bilibine se colportaient dans les salons de Vienne, [Bilibin's reviews spread throughout the Viennese drawing rooms] and often influenced so-called important matters.
His thin, emaciated, yellowish face was all covered with large wrinkles, which always seemed as cleanly and diligently washed as fingertips after a bath. The movements of these wrinkles were the main play of his physiognomy. Either his forehead wrinkled in wide folds, his eyebrows went up, then his eyebrows went down, and large wrinkles formed on his cheeks. Deeply set, small eyes always looked straight and cheerfully.
“Well, now tell us your exploits,” he said.
Bolkonsky, in the most modest way, never mentioning himself, told the case and the reception of the Minister of War.
- Ils m "ont recu avec ma nouvelle, comme un chien dans un jeu de quilles, [They received me with this news, as they accept a dog when it interferes with the game of bowling pins," he concluded.
Bilibin grinned and loosened the folds of his skin.
“Cependant, mon cher,” he said, examining his nail from afar and picking up the skin above his left eye, “malgre la haute estime que je professe pour le the Russian Orthodox army, j" avoue que votre victoire n "est pas des plus victorieuses. [However, my dear, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian army, I believe that your victory is not one of the most brilliant.]
He continued the same on french, pronouncing in Russian only those words that he contemptuously wanted to emphasize.
- How? You, with all your mass, fell upon the unfortunate Mortier with one division, and this Mortier goes between your hands? Where is the victory?
- However, seriously speaking, - answered Prince Andrey, - all the same we can say without boasting that it is a little better than Ulm ...
- Why didn't you take us one, at least one marshal?
- Because not everything is done as expected, and not as regularly as at the parade. We thought, as I told you, to go to the rear by seven o'clock in the morning, and did not come even by five in the evening.
- Why didn't you come at seven in the morning? You had to come at seven in the morning, ”Bilibin said smiling,“ you had to come at seven in the morning.
- Why didn't you inspire Bonaparte by diplomatic means that he had better leave Genoa? - Prince Andrey said in the same tone.
“I know,” Bilibin interrupted, “you think it is very easy to take marshals from sitting on the sofa in front of the fireplace. It's true, but still, why didn't you take it? And do not be surprised that not only the Minister of War, but also the august emperor and king Franz will not be very happy with your victory; and I, the unfortunate secretary of the Russian embassy, \u200b\u200bdo not feel any need to give my Franz a thaler as a sign of joy and let him go with his Liebchen [dear] to the Prater ... True, there is no Prater here.
He looked directly at Prince Andrew and suddenly pulled the collected skin from his forehead.
“Now it's my turn to ask you 'why', my dear,” said Bolkonsky. - I confess to you that I do not understand, maybe there are diplomatic subtleties above my weak mind, but I do not understand: Mac is losing an entire army, Archduke Ferdinand and Archduke Karl do not give any signs of life and make mistakes after mistakes, finally, one Kutuzov wins a real victory, destroys the charme [charm] of the French, and the minister of war is not even interested in knowing the details.