Tristan and Cinderella

The obscure opera singer is kneeling on the floor of a small apartment in Munich. Before her lie cloth and scissors. She is making her own costume for another night's work in another small town. Suddenly, word arrives that in Manhattan the fabled Metropolitan Opera desperately needs a soprano in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Off goes our heroine in her Lufthansa pumpkin and lands the job. The audiences love her. So do the critics. The New York Times announces on Page One: "A triumph at the Met."

If there is a fairy tale to keep every frustrated diva or divo going strong, that, more or less, is it. Last week the dream came true for Brooklyn-born Soprano Klara Barlow, 45. In a dozen years of big parts with minor companies and substitute assignments in major houses, Klara never stopped believing. Now she was on the great stage of the Met, making rapturous musical love to handsome Jess Thomas, the reliable Wagnerian tenor. When at last she died by Thomas' side at the end of the Liebestod, the crowd went wild.

In truth, Barlow was a vibrant Isolde. Making the most of her ample bosom, well-turned hips and (rarity of Wagnerian rarities) trim waist, she played the Irish princess as an impetuous, headstrong woman. To New York audiences who have seen almost nothing for 15 years except Birgit Nilsson's cool, ruminative portrayal, Barlow's sexy Isolde came as a pleasant shock.

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--why not?"

Whether Wagner is tolerable with anything less than great singing is an arguable proposition, but one thing is certain. The Met's Tristan almost closed for lack of any voices at all. First, Sweden's Catarina Ligendza canceled out as Isolde pleading illness. Nilsson was busy elsewhere. Then Tenor Jon Vickers, who seems to tremble before Wagner but may just possibly be the Tristan everyone at the Met (including Nilsson) has been waiting for, begged out of his first two performances--he wanted more time. Not to be outdone, Conductor Erich Leinsdorf threatened to resign, complaining that he could not get decisions from the besieged opera house, but then relented and stayed on.

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."

That is one reason perhaps why she has always been ready to pack in a hurry and trot off as a last-minute replacement. "You get a call in Bonn at 11 a.m. to be in Vienna to do the performance that night. I wonder if I can refresh my memory of the opera in time. Sometimes I haven't sung it for a year or two. I may listen to a tape of the opera for 20 minutes or so to see what's left in my 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.

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