Fred Clifton

Fred Clifton was the stage name of Thomas Husler Greene (29 May 1844 – 7 September 1903), an English opera singer and actor born in Dudley, Worcestershire, the eldest of four children of Frederick Greene, a hairdresser and later a music seller, and his wife Eliza, née Husler. He is best remembered for originating three roles in the early Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas: the Notary in The Sorcerer, the Boatswain in H.M.S. Pinafore, and the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance.

Clifton launched his performing career in Reading in 1861 at the Theatre Royal, subsequently appearing in provincial concerts. The following year, in Liverpool, he married Ellen Matilda Hird, born around 1848 in Shaldon, Devon, who performed under the stage name Therese Brunelli. Together they billed themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Fred Clifton, working music halls and other venues near Hull and Sculcoates as "burlesque operatic, high and low comic, duettists and solo comic and sentimental singers." By 1865, Clifton had moved into London engagements, appearing as a musical lecturer and entertainer at the Royal Polytechnic Institute and later at the Crystal Palace. In 1868 he took the role of Krakwitz in Offenbach's The Last of the Paladins and went on to appear at various other London theatres. By the early 1870s he was touring with the Eldred opéra-bouffe company, among others, while his wife pursued her own career; in 1872, Richard D'Oyly Carte served as her theatrical agent when she was engaged in the title role of the first English production of The Black Crook at London's Alhambra Theatre.

Clifton's association with D'Oyly Carte productions defined the central chapter of his career. In November 1877 he originated the role of the Notary in the first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer at the Opera Comique, also appearing as the Grand Duke in The Spectre Knight and as the Usher in Trial by Jury, both of which served as companion pieces to The Sorcerer. In May 1878, again at the Opera Comique, he created the role of Bill Bobstay, the Boatswain, in H.M.S. Pinafore. In November 1879, Clifton traveled to New York City alongside Gilbert, Sullivan, and Carte, and in December of that year reprised the role of Bobstay in the first authorized production of Pinafore at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. On December 31, 1879, at the same theatre, he created the role of the Sergeant of Police in the original production of The Pirates of Penzance, subsequently touring with Carte's First American Company in that production until June 1880, when he sailed back to England aboard the SS Abyssinia.

By the second half of July 1880, Clifton was performing in Brighton. In 1881 he played the Registrar General in La Belle Normande, an adaptation of Léon Vasseur's 1874 operetta, at the Globe Theatre on Newcastle Street. He appears to have returned to the United States by the mid-1880s, with an actor of his name playing the butler in Twins at the Standard Theatre in New York in May 1885. That July he appeared alongside Lillian Russell and fellow former D'Oyly Carte principals J. H. Ryley and Alice Barnett in Billee Taylor at New York's Casino Theatre. In 1889 he performed with Harry Paulton and company in the comic opera Paola by Edward Jakobowski at the Grand Opera House in Philadelphia. Clifton continued to appear in comic opera in New York until 1897 and also composed incidental music for plays. His Broadway appearances spanned 1887 to 1903 and included the productions Paul Kauvar and John Henry.

After separating from his wife around 1877, Clifton lived with a performer known as Mary or Marie Glover, with whom he had a daughter in England before the two relocated to America, where they went on to have six more children. Clifton died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903 at the age of 59.