John Charles Thomas (Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, September 6, 1891 - Apple Valley, California, December 13, 1960) was a popular American opera and concert baritone known for his exuberant singing style and virile, well trained voice. (The year of his birth is not certain; some sources give it as 1889.)

Career

Thomas was the son of a Methodist minister of Welsh descent while his mother, of German immigrant stock, had been an amateur singer. His father possessed a good natural voice, too, and with such a musical background, it was inevitable that Thomas should join the church choir as a boy. After studying initially for a medical career, he won a scholarship to the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 1910. He remained there for two years, receiving vocal tuition from Adelin Fermin.

In 1912, Thomas left the Peabody conservatory and toured briefly with a musical troupe. He then went to live in New York City, where he performed with a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta company before being contracted by the Shubert Brothers to perform in the show The Peasant Girl, which opened in March 1913. For the next nine years, he starred in a series of hit Broadway musicals including Her Soldier Boy, Maytime, Naughty Marietta, and Apple Blossoms (with Fred and Adele Astaire).

His debut in a fully-staged opera occurred in March 1925, as Amonasro in a production of Aida presented by the semi-professional Washington National Opera. He did, however, sing in a concert performance of the opera Sadko at New York's Carnegie Hall the previous December.

Thomas was earning a great deal of money singing on Broadway but he wanted to gain more experience in opera. During the 1922-1928 period, he spent part of each year in Europe, polishing his singing technique and appearing under contract at La Monnaie opera house in Brussels for the seasons of 1925-1927. He would return to La Monnaie for 25 more performances in 1928, eight in 1930 and four in 1931. More importantly, he appeared with the famous Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in productions of Faust at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, in July 1928.

He continued to give recitals in the United States during this period and, in 1925, acted in a silent film, Under the Red Robe. He made recordings, too, for the Vocalion label (1920-1924) and Brunswick Records (1924-1929), before signing with RCA Victor in 1931. Thomas also became a pioneer of radio broadcasts, in both New York and Florida. He accepted engagements with the Washington National, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia Opera companies, and in 1934, to satisfy a public demand, he was signed by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He would remain at the Met until 1943, performing opposite such stars as the soprano Rosa Ponselle.

In the austere Great Depression years of the 1930s, he established himself as one of the most sought-after singers in America, with both a classical/operatic following and a considerable popular audience. His concerts normally offered selections from both repertoires: classical and operatic to begin, and American art songs and humorous “character” songs to close. He also appeared regularly on radio on Five-Star Theater (1932-1933) with the Joseph Bonime Orchestra, Vince Radio Program (1934-1936), Ford, General Motors and RCA Magic Key (1937-1940), and Coca Cola (1940-1941).

In 1938 he helped Edwin Lester launch the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, appearing in the company's very first production as Franz Schubert in Blossom Time, a Viennese operetta Das Dreimäderlhaus, with music arranged from that of Schubert, adapted for American audiences by Dorothy Donnelly and Sigmund Romberg. Thomas sang regularly in operettas with the LACLO up through 1942, starring in productions of The Gypsy Baron, H.M.S. Pinafore, The Chocolate Soldier, and Music in the Air.

He now divided his time between Easton, Maryland and Palm Beach, Florida, pursuing an avid life as a sportsman, with golfing, yachting, racing speedboats and deep sea fishing among his favourite pastimes.

The Second World War made concert touring inconvenient, and very high taxes made it non-remunerative. Thomas was engaged to star on the Westinghouse Radio Program from 1943-1946 with the Victor Young Orchestra. He probably reached his widest audience during this period even though his practice of performing songs exclusively in English has left him less well-remembered than perhaps he should be. Nevertheless many songs designed for him to sing have gone on to become standards, such as the version of the "The Lord's Prayer" by Albert Hay Malotte and the arrangement of "Home on the Range" by David Guion.

In 1947-48, Thomas undertook a long and demanding tour of Australia and New Zealand where he played to crowded theatres. He retired bit by bit from the concert stage after 1950, and settled in Apple Valley, California in 1955 with his wife Dorothy. He died there in December 1960 from cancer. Owing to his high-spending lifestyle, the fortune that he had earned through singing was largely dissipated at the time of his death.

Recordings

John Charles Thomas left a large pool of audio recordings, many of which sold extremely well in their day and have been transferred in recent times to compact disc. Only a handful of these recordings, however, are devoted to opera arias. His operatic voice is probably best appreciated in commercial offerings such as Nemico della patria from Andrea Chenier, and C’en est fait… Salomé demande from Herodiade. However, live broadcast recordings of Per me giunto from Don Carlos, Vien Leonora from La Favorita and Il Balen from Il Trovatore display his bel canto technique and brilliant top notes.

He sang hymns, art songs, ballads, cowboy tunes and shanties with equal facility. He was less effective in introspective German lieder because they did not suit his buoyant personality as well as other material.

Voice

Thomas belonged to a remarkable sequence of outstanding American operatic baritones whose careers stretched from the 1920s through to the 1960s. They included Richard Bonelli, Lawrence Tibbett, Arthur Endreze, Leonard Warren and Robert Merrill. His was an essentially lyric voice, which, while not "light", was more notable for its free top register than its lower range. It was particularly suited to the French operatic repertoire, in which he was seldom heard in the United States apart from his Athanael in Massenet's Thais. It had remarkable flexibility, which was enhanced by Thomas's energy and expressiveness, particularly in his repertoire of popular material. In operatic work, however, this technical skill could be shown to fine effect in trills and runs. Notable examples of this are his versions of Il balen fromIl Trovatore, and the Drinking Song from Hamlet.

In common with a lot of singers of his inter-war generation, Thomas's voice was very distinctive. In part, this may have been due to his early career on Broadway. He knew how to "sell" a song, to build a stirring aria to a climax that would bring audiences to their feet. While the voice was always unmistakably his, it changed noticeably in character over time. His early recordings display a darker tonal hue, and the voice is stiffer, as though he were imitating the stentorian Italian baritone of a previous generation, Titta Ruffo. By 1931, and certainly by 1934, he had found the more fluid, natural vocal style for which he is best remembered. From the late 1940s into the '50s, his vibrato began to widen, though it was never an unpardonable flaw, and the voice grew somewhat thicker and heavier in tone.

External links

• John Charles Thomas at Allmusic.com

References

1. McPherson, Jim, "Mr. Meek Goes to Washington: The Story of the Small-Potatoes Canadian Baritone Who Founded America’s 'National' Opera," The Opera Quarterly, volume 20, no. 2, Spring 2004

• Thomas, John Charles by Richard LeSueur and Elizabeth Forbes, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', edited by Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
• John Charles Thomas, Beloved Baritone of American Opera and Popular Music by Michael J. Maher, McFarland Press, 2006 ISBN 0-7864-2668-3
• Singers to Remember by Harold Simpson, Oakwood Press, Great Britain (circa 1972).