Even as a child Mullings had a beautiful voice: he made his concert debut when only eleven, singing the soprano solos in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Although he began a career in teaching, in 1904 he decided instead upon singing and between 1905 and 1909 studied at the Birmingham School of Music. Here his teachers were Fred Beard followed by George Breeden and in addition to opera he also studied song, often by contemporary composers. In 1907 Mullings sang Gounod’s Faust in concert with the John Ridding Opera Company, going on shortly afterwards to make his first stage appearance with this company in Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney. His first significant professional engagement did not take place until 1910, when he sang in Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust with the Darlington Choral Society.

Mullings’s fame spread rapidly. In 1911 he took part in his first Promenade Concert in London, singing the ‘Forging Song’ from Siegfried under Sir Henry Wood; and in 1913 was engaged by the Denhof Company to sing an ambitious repertoire that included Tristan / Tristan and Isolde with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting. Despite limited rehearsal he made a strong impression on his debut in this role in Birmingham.

Between 1915 and 1920 Mullings was the principal tenor of the Beecham Opera Company, in which he sang not only repertoire parts such as the title roles in Otello and The Tales of Hoffmann, but also comic parts such as Midas in an arrangement of Bach’s Phoebus and Pan. He created the role of Don Whiskerandos in Stanford’s setting of Sheridan’s The Critic in 1915. Later roles with the company included Radamès / Aida, Canio / Pagliacci and the title roles in Parsifal, Samson and Dalila, Siegfried and Tannhäuser. Following the company’s demise in 1920, several of its members formed the self-governing British National Opera Company. Its first production was Aida in Bradford in 1922, with Mullings as Radamès. He sang with this company until it disbanded in 1929, although its standards were not always those of the Beecham Company.

Between 1930 and 1939 Mullings was principally active as a teacher (having succeeded Breeden as teacher of solo singing at Birmingham in 1927) and as a concert singer, although he continued to make occasional operatic appearances. Between 1936 and 1939 he sang Canio and Manrico / Il trovatore with the J.W. Lomax Universal Grand Opera Company, also becoming a producer with this company. With the outbreak of World War II, Mullings joined CEMA (Council for Entertainment, Music and Arts) and devoted his time to entertaining troops and war workers, often singing recitals that featured the songs of both established and new British composers. He retired from teaching in Birmingham in 1946, but continued to teach in Wolverhampton on a weekly basis.

Contemporary critics and leading musicians consistently praised Mullings, not least for the sincerity and power of his singing. Neville Cardus said of his song performances: ‘I have heard no singer give to English words the imaginative point, salience and voltage of Mullings’ while Ernest Newman said of his Otello: ‘…he ranged with extraordinary ease and veracity from the most elemental fury to the most pitiful pathos.’

Mullings recorded extensively for the British Columbia label, although in many of his acoustic sides the recording process clearly had difficulty with coping with the sheer power of his voice. His interpretation of Canio in the complete recording of Pagliacci of 1927 is especially notable.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers, Naxos 8.558097-100).