It's high time to prepare a queer memorial to Klaus Nomi
He had a vocal range of six octaves, styled himself an alien and was the first celebrity to die from the effects of AIDS. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Klaus Nomi's death. By the beginning of 2024, he would have turned 80.
Klaus Nomi (24.01.1944 - 06.08.1983) at an appearance in the early 1980s (Picture: IMAGO / United Archives)
By Axel Krämer June 10, 2023, 12:45 h
A real singing voice can usually be assigned quite clearly to a person of flesh and blood. With Klaus Nomi, however, she seemed to herself - wow! - to be released from the body at once in order to penetrate from unearthly spheres to the ears of the eavesdroppers.
New York in the late 1970s: Klaus Nomi is gradually attracting the attention of a wider public in the club scene in the East Village and on the Lower Eastside. He is dealing with a cool punk and new wave audience, which usually cannot be taken off the beat so quickly. But this is now shaken and deeply touched by that mysterious being who appears on stage from artificial fog, accompanied by spherical synth sound.
Nomi's voice covers a range of six octaves. In the deeper areas, she sounds affected, but can clearly be identified as male, with a strikingly rolling "R". Then again, she suddenly switches to the very highest pitches, which are actually only reached by boys and sopranos.
Combination of rock music and opera singing
Klaus Nomi's performance in the clubs and off-theatres becomes a sensation, a fascinating combination of rock music and opera singing. It is an aesthetic Gesamtkunstwerk, which also includes styling and habitus: the spacey outfit, a rigid look, the robotic movements, a haunting facial expression under the thickly applied make-up, the face powdered white, the lips accentuated with a sharp-edged black lacquer color. The hairstyle is also legendary: the hairline that goes back at the tips and only tapers towards the middle of the forehead is not concealed, but highlighted by piling up the remaining hair.
His first screenings cause such a stir that some people scream in amazement. Others, on the other hand, wonder if all this can be real – or if they are even deceived by the use of a sound recording. For this, one must know that at that time in Baroque operas, with a few exceptions, countertenors were not yet used instead of the roles originally intended for castrati, but women or men with lower vocal ranges. A falsetto voice, especially equipped with as much virtuosity as that of Klaus Nomi, is a novelty. The vast majority of the audience has never heard anything like this before.
Even when Nomi appeared on German television in 1982 in the show "Na Sowas!" performing the aria "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" from the opera "Samson and Delilah" by Camille Saint-Saëns, Thomas Gottschalk feels compelled to vouch for the authenticity of the performance: "Ladies and gentlemen, that was not a trick now, it was not technical gimmicks either. It was really the original voice of Klaus Nomi, live and here in the studio."
As an international star, celebrated in Japan, the USA and France and appreciated by companies such as Fiorucci and Jägermeister as an advertising medium, Nomi has reached the peak of his career at this time. The record company RCA France has long taken him under their wing and released two albums of him.
Klaus Nomi as advertising medium for Jägermeister