Article under (very slow) construction ....
I wrote most of this little article many years ago, meaning to go back to it and get all the missing answers at a later date. Shaken up by an old playbill, that 'later date' arrived yesterday. And I have to report that, alas, although I picked up some extra bits and bobs, the nitty gritty is still eluding me. So, who can help me
BARTLEMAN, Thomas John (b Glasgow c 1822; d 49 West 13th Street, NYC 1 June 1879)
When Tom Bartleman died, in America, aged about 57, the press, rather surprisingly, gave him an obituary notice, and even more surprisingly described him as ‘famous for two generations as a bass singer in English opera’.
Bartleman had never been 'famous'. And his time in English opera had, certainly, never attained even one generation, and that in mostly lesser roles.
Whether he was born Bartleman, I do not know. Probably not. James Bartleman (1769-1821) had been the most celebrated English bass singer of his time, and I suspect the name may have been borrowed. The obituary tells us that he was brought up in Newcastle, and had been a hatter and furrier’s apprentice, a double bass player and a concert singer. Maybe so. But under what name? So, is it a coincidence, too, that the mayor of Tynemouth at this time was one … Alexander Bartleman (d 24 October 1866) 'of Hathridge House'?
My first sighting of 'Mr Bartleman' is at the Haymarket with Pyne and Harrison in 1851 (Sheriff in Queen for a Day). In August and December 1852, described as being ‘of the Haymarket’, I see him in concert in Scotland, and ‘Mr T J Bartleman’ rises (4 January 1853), to singing The Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus in concert with the Glasgow Harmonic Society alongside Misses Rainforth and Whitnall and Elliot Galer. Then, in contrast, in February, he turns up at the Royal Victoria Music Hall, Salford along with one Madame Angeletta [Quin], who has been performing, since 1850 (7 October Reading 'Should he upbraid'). They show up at the Albion Hotel Music Room, Dame Lane (‘manager’), Dublin in March, and the Rotondo Gardens through May, at the Bradford Colosseum and at Kingstown. He is now ‘late of the Italian Opera and Her Majesty’s Theatre’ and ‘from Exeter Hall’. Really? When? In 1854, back at the Albion (20 February 'The Singing Lesson', Barnet's 'Sol Fa Duet'), the couple have been joined by Mdlle (sic) Josephine Aldina, principal contralto of the Fenice, Venice, singing … English serio-comic songs. The Fenice, Wheatsheaf pub, Portsea, perhaps? Later in the year, I see 'Mr Bartleman' duetting operatically with Mrs Stephens at Jude's Shades in Dublin. Is it he?
By 1855, ‘Madame Angeletta Quin[o]’ is ‘Mrs Bartleman’ (but not to be found becoming such in the English registers) and they are doing ‘operatic sketches’ at the seaside, and singing at the Surrey Music Hall in Southwark and Holder’s Concert Hall in Birmingham (’the renowned baritone and the pleasing and talented soprano’). They played the Surrey again in 1856, she sang at the Paddington Music Hall at the Running Horse Tavern and he at the Dr Johnson in Fleet Street, and she can be seen voicing Albany Brown’s Marionettes at Cremorne in 1857 ('Madame Chocolato'), but ‘Mrs Bartleman’ does not stay on the bills for long. However, Angeletta still features in the 1871 census, and she apparently worked as a music-hall chorister at the more important London music-hall venues under the name of Madame Bartaletti.
I spot Tom at St Martin’s Hall in 1856, in the Saturday Concerts, and in 1857 he was a member of Willert Beale’s touring opera company, with which he played Devilshoof and Don Jose alongside Mme Comte Borchardt, and Germont with Mme Gassier. He continued his spell as musical director at the Dr Johnson Music Hall, and he and his wife turn up at Lowick’s concert at the Sussex Hall. In 1858, I spot him at the Colosseum with Susanna Cole and The Grand Diorama of the Lisbon Earthquake, at Ipswich with Finoli, again at St Martin’s Hall, as a singing witch in the Royal Marriage Festival Macbeth at Her Majesty's Theatre, and at the Alhambra. In May, he sang Don Jose (Maritana), Sulpizio and Baron Dauphol in a Tully opera season at Sadler’s Wells and gave his Devilshoof in a Benefit at Drury Lane.
Whether he was the ‘Mr Charles Bartleman’ who sang ‘The Wolf’ and ‘Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep’, conducted, and got himself attacked by a would-be garrotter at Liverpool is anyone’s guess, but he seems to be paired with a Miss Ada Budd 'pupil of Frank Bodda', so probably not.
In September 1858, Tom Bartleman joined the Pyne and Harrison opera company for their Drury Lane season, playing supporting parts in The Rose of Castille (Pablo), Maritana, The Crown Diamonds and Satanella (First Pirate), and he continued with them to Covent Garden, on tour, and to their 1859 season when he played Lt Fonblanque in Mellon’s Victorine and the King in the Covent Garden pantomime.
I find him in concert at the Surrey Gardens ('I am a roamer') with Susannah Cole, at the Glasgow Temperance concerts, at the South of England Music Hall, and repeating his Singing Witch at the Princess’s Theatre (August 1860), until Willoughby Weiss got ill and he was promoted to the part of Hecate. It was a role he would play on a number of occasions thereafter.
In October 1860 he was engaged for E T Smith’s operatic company at Her Majesty’s Theatre, and thus took the part of Little John in the original production of Macfarren’s Robin Hood. He also repeated his Devilshoof and took a small part in Queen Topaze and, when The Amber Witch was produced, he supported as the King. At the same time, he was performing at the Alhambra Music Hall, and in 1861 he took over the post of musical director there, singing and conducting operatic selections, dancers and jugglers until Easter 1863. He repeated his Hecate at Drury Lane (1864), was improbably cast as Pluto in the attempt to play an anglicised Orphée aux enfers at the Haymarket (1865), gave his Devilshoof at Astley’s (1866) and, in 1867, returned to Drury Lane for another Macbeth and for Faust in which he was cast as Brander (with a song). The drama Fettered at Holborn (with a song) was less happy.
In 1869 he took over as chairman at the Philharmonic Music Hall where he was teamed with one Madame Carlitza Maryno, who may' or may not, have been Angeletta under yet another name.
In August 1871, a Benefit performance of Guy Mannering was staged at the Grecian for ‘Mr Bartleman the vocalist’. It was to be his last performance in England. The next month he sailed for America to join the Parepa company in New York.
John Bartleman 39 gent and Elizabeth Bartleman 38 lady arrived New York 23 September 1871 on The Queen? Surely not them! Must be a coincidence. Or VSE. Or ...? In the census of April 1871 he was 49, and Angeletta was 40.
Bartleman’s career in America seems to have been fairly modest. After playing bits with Parepa, he turns up at Philadelphia in 1872 in an English Concert Opera Company with the Bowlers, Edith Abell and a certain Mme Eliza Devieni D’Auria, which seems to be still off-and-on going (with Madame replaced by Pauline Canissa) in Canada in mid-1874. In between times, he played with the Kellogg Company -- I see him as the Sherriff in Martha, Bartolo in Nozze di Figaro --. He appeared with Mrs Bowler again and then with Rollin Howard, on the bills at Broadway’s Colosseum, in variety with the illusionist ‘Miss Angie Schott', played Olifour in La Bayadère with Eugene Clarke in Boston (14 June 1875), Gabriel in Guy Mannering with Emma Waller at Booth’s Theatre (6 December 1875, 'The Wolf'), and at the Fifth Avenue Theatre (26 November) with Mary Anderson. In 1877 he went on tour to Canada with William Hamilton’s troupe, with the notorious Blanche Rieves as soprano.
He apparently appeared in further small roles with Clara Louise Kellogg and made his biggest splash with a rumour (1878) that he was to wed the prima donna. So Angeletta seems to be no longer on the scene. Yet, when he died, he had a widow. Ah! journalism!
Latterly, he turns up in operatic excerpts at the New York Aquarium, in Grossin’s Panorama, with Downing’s Ninth Regiment Band, in Dime Entertainments and other minor employs, played the part of Mr Truelove in in a little piece called Manhattan Beach, or Love Among the Breakers (1878) singing a bass solo ‘in praise of clams and soft-shell crabs’, and in 1879 he was cast in the role of Winka in Fatinitza. It was during rehearsals for that piece, at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, that he suffered the fall which resulted in his death 'from internal haemmorhage'. The obituary says his last performance was as Dick Deadeye at the same theatre. And that he ‘left a widow in destitute circumstances’.
All in all, a modest career, with Robin Hood, The Amber Witch and Orpheus in the Haymarket (as well as the regular Hecates and Devilshoofs) the best of his theatre credits, but certainly not enough to win the accolade of ‘famous for two generations’. I think someone may have got their Bartlemen muddled up.
Well, I haven't unmuddled this one satisfactorily. Yet. And I don't have another 20 years ...
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