Klaus Nomi (1944-1983)

(this text can also be heard in the audio clip)

Klaus Nomi was born Klaus Sperber in Immenstadt, Bavaria, in 1944. He first trained as a pastry chef. At the same time, he persistently sought a path to the stage and initially worked as an extra at theatres in Essen before moving to West Berlin in the mid-1960s to further his vocal training.
In Berlin, he studied at a music conservatory, but was trained there only as a baritone, as there were hardly any opportunities for male countertenors. To make his living, he worked as an usher at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; after performances or at night, he sang on the empty stage for staff from the usher and technical departments.
At the same time, Klaus Sperber found a space within the West Berlin gay scene of the 1960s where his interest in opera and gender-nonconforming presentation met an open audience. He performed regularly at the Kleist-Kasino, which had been founded as early as 1921. The Kleist-Kasino became the Bull in 2002—making the Bull, with a history dating back to 1921, the second-oldest queer bar in the world still in operation. Only the Centralhjørnet in Copenhagen is four years older.
Klaus Nomi captivated audiences with his highly dramatic operatic singing and developed the beginnings of his later-famous stage persona at the Kleist-Kasino: a combination of androgynous appearance, extreme vocal range, and a deliberately artificial, “otherworldly” presence.
Despite his studies and practical experience, his attempts to be accepted into the mainstream opera world remained unsuccessful. Opera houses cast him as a baritone only in minor roles, and a demand for countertenors—which would be taken for granted in Baroque opera today—barely existed back then. In 1973, Sperber therefore decided to emigrate to New York City.
There he initially worked odd jobs, established himself as a pastry chef, and supplied the Guggenheim Museum, among others, with Linzer tarts. For a time, he shared an apartment with Rosa von Praunheim. He continued his vocal training—this time with the stated goal of performing as a countertenor. He discarded his real name and chose “Klaus Nomi” as his stage name—a play on the science fiction magazine Omni, which helped him cement his image as a somewhat otherworldly figure in the queer New York underground.

Nomi became a fixture on the East Village scene starting in the late 1970s. Performances in the New Wave Vaudeville series, club gigs, and finally his television appearance alongside David Bowie on *Saturday Night Live* brought him international recognition. Before the performance, Bowie is said to have remarked, “People are gonna freak out when they see this, and your careers are gonna blast off.” Nomi’s combination of synthesizer sounds, opera arias, and pop covers, performed in a black-and-white plastic tuxedo with a face painted white, became an icon of queer pop culture. His friend and artistic partner Joey Arias recalled: “The place went bananas, it was totally pop, but also surreal and weird and beautiful and very Downtown New York.”

Klaus Nomi released two albums before AIDS robbed him of the chance to continue his success and enjoy it for longer. He was at the beginning of a burgeoning career that he was not allowed to pursue.

The disease began to manifest in 1982: AIDS was still a death sentence back then—and remained so for over a decade. Nomi spent his final weeks in great solitude. Many of his companions were afraid of contracting the new “gay cancer” and avoided contact with him. He died on August 6, 1983, as one of the first well-known artists to die of AIDS. His ashes were scattered over New York.

Klaus Nomi has left a lasting influence on the arts. Lady Gaga described how she was “fascinated” by Nomi and the eccentric Australian Leigh Bowery in her youth: “I grew up with them and naturally became the artist I am today.” Kylie Minogue also paid tribute to Nomi at the 2019 Glastonbury Festival with a lookalike dancer. Fashion designers such as Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul Gaultier were also inspired by him.

In Berlin, there is currently little to commemorate Klaus Nomi. Hopefully, this will soon change with a QR code from “Queer Heroes,” so that we can honor Klaus Nomi at the places that shaped his early career as a “singing alien” and pop icon.