John Charles Thomas
John Charles Thomas (September 6, 1891 – December 13, 1960) was an American opera, operetta and concert baritone.
For the former Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, see John Charles Thomas (judge).
John Charles Thomas
September 6, 1891
Meyersdale, Pennsylvania
December 13, 1960 (aged 69)
Apple Valley, California
Singer
1912-1950
Opposition to rock-and-roll music[edit]
Thomas appeared twice as a contestant on the TV quiz program "You Bet Your Life", hosted by Groucho Marx. These episodes aired on 5 December 1957 and 12 December 1957. He was a strong vocal opponent of rock-and-roll music during the first appearance and debated the subject with advocate Roberta Rene during the second.[4][5]
Recordings[edit]
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 Chénier, and "C’en est fait… Salomé demande" from Hérodiade. Live broadcast recordings of "Per me giunto" from Don Carlos, "Vien Leonora" from La favorite and "Il balen" from Il trovatore display his brilliant top notes and bel canto capabilities.
He sang hymns, art songs, ballads, cowboy tunes, introspective German lieder, and shanties.
Voice[edit]
Thomas belonged to a sequence of leading American operatic baritones whose overlapping careers stretched in an unbroken line from the 1920s through to the 1990s. They included Richard Bonelli, Lawrence Tibbett, Arthur Endrèze (who was based in Paris), Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill, Cornell MacNeil, Sherrill Milnes and Richard Fredricks.
His lyric voice was more notable for its free top register than for 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 skill could be shown to good effect in trills and runs. Notable examples of his technical expertise are displayed his versions of "Il balen" from Il trovatore, and the "Drinking Song" from Hamlet.
In common with a lot of singers of his inter-war generation, Thomas's voice was highly 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 never became an unpardonable flaw in his singing technique, and the voice grew somewhat thicker and heavier in tone.