This REALLY UNUSUAL solo by Metropolitan Opera basso ARTHUR MIDDLETON (1880-1929) is taken from an Edison Blue Amberol 4-minute cylinder # 28225. The selection is "I am a Roamer Bold" from Mendelssohn's SON AND STRANGER.
Middleton, a prolific recording artist for the Edison Company, made many 10-inch Diamond Discs and 22 Edison Blue Amberol cylinders...and a number of pre-1912 4-minute black wax cylinders.Arthur Middleton, an American operatic and concert bass-baritone, was born in Logan, Iowa on November 28, 1880 and died in Chicago, Illinois on February 16, 1929.Despite his less than stellar operatic career, largely because of his girth and preference for the concert stage, Middleton became in essence the principal bass for Thomas Edison's National Phonograph Company, which promoted his association with the Metropolitan Opera and recorded him in repertory of far larger import and scope than anything he presented on the Met's stage. Middleton recorded not only under his own name but also as EDWARD ALLEN and Eduard Mittelstadt. Middleton figured in the Edison Company's celebrated "tone tests," in which recording artists would perform in tandem with their recordings, played on Edison equipment, before an audience in order to demonstrate that the two were indistinguishable.Middleton sang secondary roles at the Metropolitan Opera—which required a leser degree of acting---during a tenure encompassing 22 performances between November 1914 and February 1916. In both his debut on November 18, 1914 and his farewell on February 26, 1916, he appeared as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. He sang two other Wagnerian roles for the company: Titurel in Parsifal and Donner in Das Rheingold. His non-Wagnerian roles were Ludwig in Weber's Euryanthe and Don Fernando.
Perhaps Middleton's most important operatic assumption came not with the Metropolitan Opera but rather with the Chicago Opera Company: he created the role of Ramatzin in Henry Hadley's opera Azora, the Daughter of Montezuma which had its world premiere in Chicago in December 1917 and its New York premiere on January 26, 1918. The New York Times, in its review published January 28, 1918, wrote, "Arthur Middleton, a well-known bass-baritone, made an excellent figure of the noble Tlascalan's rival, the Mexican General Ramatzin."
Middleton has a very active concert career that took him all over the United States, sometimes accompanied by his friend, tenor Paul Althouse, who had an extensive Metropolitan Opera career. Middleton was a successful voice teacher in New York. One reference noted the fact that he participated in radio concerts and radio plays. He died young.
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