Frank Mullings (born in
Walsall
on March 10 1881 – died in Manchester
on May 19 1953) was a leading tenor with Thomas
Beecham's Beecham Opera Company and British National Opera
Company in the 1910s and 1920s. His repertoire included
Tristan in
Tristan und
Isolde, Radames in
Aida and
Otello.
Mullings
made his operatic début in Coventry
in 1907 as
Faust. He joined the
Denhof Opera Company in 1913,
was with the Beecham Opera Company from 1916 to 1921, and the
British National Opera
Company from 1922 to its closure in 1929.
He was the first to
sing Parsifal in English, which he
did at the Royal Opera
House
in Covent
Garden
in 1919. Mullings was a noted singer of
Otello and
Tristan. He created the role of
Hadyar in
Nail by
Isidore de Lara, and Apollo in
Alkestis by
Rutland Boughton.
The critic
Neville Cardus, who came
to know Mullings well, wrote that “Mr. Mullings acted Canio in
Pagliacci far beyond the plane of
conventional
Italian opera of the
blood and sand order. His singing is not exactly all honey, but how
intensely he lived in the part! He almost persuades us that there
is real tragedy about – that if the puppet Canio were pricked,
blood and not sawdust would come forth.”
Mullings
joined the teaching staff of the Birmingham
School of Music
from 1927 to 1946, and the Royal Manchester
College of Music
from 1944 to 1949.
References
- [1] Mullings on Divineart.com
- [2] Mullings on Answers.com
- [3] Mullings on Historicopera.com
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