CHARLES E.J. MOULTON

Charles Edmond James Moulton

 

I was on stage even before I was born. My mother was pregnant with me in the third month while singing Ortrud in Wagner’s Lohingrin and in the seventh month when my parents had a concert singing Rodgers and Bernstein. Her stomach very prominent, she sang “Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight”. No wonder I became a singer.

A colleague was working at the opera of Graz, when my mother and she became pregnant simultaneously. It so happened that I met that colleague’s son 32 years onwards in Bad Hersfeld as we were Jesus Christ Superstar. We realized our mothers had taken pregnancy leave simultaneously and that we were breastfed in the same house.

I was born on September 8^th 1969 and was four and a half kilograms heavy at the time of my birth. Therefore, I was called “der Bürgermeister”, or “the mayor”, in the hospital where I was born.

         Well, soon after Graz we left for Mödling and its’ small-town suburban charm. My memories of my father’s Irish sheepdog Fred are scarce, but I do remember seeing him walk by my crib and being really surprised about his presence.

My first memories include looking up at my mother’s face as she wound up playing mobile toy. “Hänschen Klein” was probably the first melody I heard after I was born.

         I wanted to accomplish everything myself as a toddler. There were a time when that was not possible, but I do remember taking out a splinter on my own. My excursion under hundreds of ladybugs one summer was a memory I have conquered. A Christmas tree falling on me ended up being a witty thing, for some reason. I just laughed. I did fall on a stone staircase one summer day and hit my tongue. I stuck my fingers into a toaster. My mum was on the phone, speaking to a colleague she had not spoken to for a long time and heard a shriek from the kitchen. I paid for it by letting my fingers rest under cold water for an hour before rushing to the hospital.

Well, my mother received her employment at the Opera and so we moved to Vienna. I went to a Kindergarten, where the nuns were truly serious. I was very surprised one sleeping break when the nun actually smiled. I fell in love with a girl named Julia.

I called her Hallejulia.

During my summers in Sweden I got to visit a Swedish day-care centre, where the children called me “Tysken”: “the German”. Needless to say, I was the son of a Swede and an Irish-American, with Danish, Belgian and Spanish ancestors. There was nothing German about me. People have always misunderstood me.

My grandmother’s home town of Kalmar was Sweden to me and even when we were in Sweden we were not in Sweden until we were in Kalmar. My grandma was the sweetest old gal on the universe.

         I knew bits of Swedish and English, but most of my linguistic knowledge was German. When we moved to Partille in 1974, I immediately learned Swedish in such a speed that my German got lost. For a while there, I spoke no language fluently that my father spoke. That was all changed when we visited America in 1976. My English was complemented to perfection during those six weeks.

We visited the east coast and the mid west. I even remember making ice-cream and swimming in a lake surrounded by car tires. I remember driving through New York City and my father getting lost trying to find the U.N. building.

I also remember being served something called Baseball Flakes and a little dog named Wienerschnitzel. I even remember a neighbour dog named Hitler. I remember catching fireflies in the garden at a relative’s house and seeing where my father grew up in Glen Ellyn. I remember the fourth of July and I remember watching Moonbase Alpha on TV. I remember going to see Dumbo in a big movie house. I remember my parents’ big concert in Osage, Iowa and how I was called up on stage in my Lederhosen to join in and sing the last number of the concert: “Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein!”

This became my mother’s standard last da capo in every concert she did from then on.

         I joined Queen Astrid’s Catholic School in 1976. After having gone to a wonderful kindergarten in Partille, we moved closer to my mother’s position at the Music Academy of Gothenburg. My best friend was Julian Reyes, a good looking chap from Columbia that later would move to Canada and become a bartender and a model. My best friend from Partille was Olle.

My summer friend was Claes-Håkan, who spent his summer holidays in Kalmar with his grandma just like me.

Anyway, I was quite busy. The English speaking children received first-language-education after school. It was with one of these children, an Indian-English girl named Sophia, that I attended Jazz Dance. My teacher was a pretty woman named Suzanne and I kept on taking lessons with her until her colleague Bosse Westerholm took over. Every year they had a Glenn Miller Show with tap and swing numbers in a theatre in the centre of Gothenburg. This show was a must-see every time. In addition to all the other great talent influences I had, this was one catalyst in my artistic creativity. We had a special club at home named “Club 31” and our cocker-spaniel was an honorary member. Our club meetings were held at the cinema, in restaurants or behind the very well decorated Christmas tree with its’ Smurf City located under the lower branches.

Our old clock Gustav kept ticking as we enjoyed the sight of the statues Norma and Hans Sachs. We munched on Francis’ English Fruitcake and after I played Santa Claus we sang songs.

Santa wasn’t my only role as a child. I enjoyed dressing up as a cowboy, a waitress, a fortune teller, a clown or a vampire and so my performance as Santa each year came as no surprise. I became an actor.

         Our home was smack full of books and art and living there was like walking around in a museum. Club 31 forever in my heart.

         Role playing and fantasy adventures were a part of my childhood. My mum always told me good night stories about the troll brothers Uggel-Guggel and Klampe-Lampe. Later on, my toy dog Ludde and his friend Linus had their adventures in my fantasy world. We included my bear Bamse and the five stuffed Snoopy toys and had a series of stories about a travelling magician named Macadabus and his bloodhound. It was great fun.

         I kept on learning how to dance pretty much consecutively through out my life until I was 17. Piano, accordion, guitar and flute: all of these instruments were practiced, with more or less consistent success, at home. My parents and I sang trios at home and we performed at parties. We were indeed The Family Moulton Singers.

         I wrote poetry and drew pictures and made up stories about characters like Tom Thumb and Fixus, the kid detective. I danced an Austrian “Schuhplattler” in a school play once and there was naturally a lot of chant at home, me playing the schooner and my mother playing the ivories.

         My mother’s initiative to set up a production of her play, based on her good night stories, impressed me. It took amazing courage to resign from the academy and become a freelance artist, in spite of the financial challenges that entailed. She had the costumes sown by a professional and the evil magician’s cape done in real silk. The boots of the trolls were covered with fur bits that were donated from fur shops. We rehearsed on weekends. Uggel-Guggel, the wiser troll brother, was played by a Spanish teacher named Törbjörn. Doctor Miracle was played by a friendly event-agent named Nisse. My mother played Madam Klara and I was Klampe Lampe.

         We had performances of this production in 1981 and so “Long Live the Trolls!” became my first theatre experience. That was 30 years ago at the point of the modification of this article, 2011.

         In 1983, we had a second summit with children’s theatre. This time with a musician named Eddie Nilsson, who played a traditional instrument named Nyckelharpa, Keyharp, and an ex-comic from a famous acrobatic ensemble named Galenskaparna. His name was Ole Moe and so we called ourselves Moerötterna i Trollskogen, The Carrots in the Troll Forest. I read a troll poem and sang songs with my mother. We toured the schools and this time we had twenty-something shows, mostly in gym halls.

         My move to Vienna was filled with new and interesting things. My studies as a freshman at the American International School were very hard. The great thing was that my first hour every day was studying Drama, exactly my cup of tea. We performed an anthology of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, which also become a chief theatrical endeavour.

         Due to pecuniary reasons and other things beyond my control, I enrolled in the musical education of the academy and started a two year education there. I took speech lessons from Professor Calix, learned singing with my mother, dancing with Sam Cayne and drama from Professor Ferolli.

My first German role, Lamon in Goethe’s Die Laune des Verliebten, was a nice experience. Soon enough, my best friend Uncas came to Vienna to see me sing Ol’ Man River made up to look like an Afro-American slave.

         The Christmas seasons of 1984-85 and 1985-86 saw me performing multiple roles in the International Theatre productions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, alongside my father as the Ghost of Christmas Present and Mr. Fezziwig. I played Young, Scrooge and Peter Cratchit as well as the Turkey Boy.

         1987 was the beginning of a flirtation with my high school diploma. I had dropped out and was unhappy about that. I had an interesting life, no doubt. Ten or twenty concerts a year, embassy receptions and premieres, music studies, a devoted home life: all that was fabulous. Still, my high school studies remained unfinished.

         So, I enrolled in the correspondence school Liber Hermods and finished two courses that year with straight A’s: English and German. I chose to complete the tests not at Liber Hermods, but in Kalmar, closer to my grandmother. I could study and have a vacation at the same time. A teacher at the school, where I completed the tests, told me that I could get the books from a school itself and do the tests right there without going through the correspondence school.

Six years later I would do exactly that, achieving my goal, but the time wasn’t ripe yet. The two first subjects were completed.

         In 1988, I was back in Sweden. I was studying singing, drama, musical theory and classical guitar in the boarding college of The St. Sigfrid’s Academy. I travelled to my grandma at the weekends and danced my butt off on Thursday, when the local disco had Happy Hour Beer Day.

         I acted in two productions that year. Prince Alexander was my role in the home made musical Molly Munter, where I sang the Triumph March from Aida with a Swedish text: “Hear, hear! We are the princes travelling to foreign lands!” Then, during the spring of 1989, I played the leading part of the auctioneer in Nils Ferlin’s Auction. The college trip we took that year was to Prague and we spent many evenings singing Barbershop music for the tourists on the Carl’s Bridge. Many an abbey heard our voices. We saw Dvorak’s and Smetana’s birthplaces, visited a Jewish cemetery and got to wait over an hour for our food in a restaurant because we didn’t give enough money to the local musicians.

         I had been walking the walls and halls of the grand renaissance castle of Kalmar all my life. The cannons, the view, the moat, the drawbridge and the well were all very familiar to me. In 1989, I became a tour guide and would spend four summers doing this. It was an interesting time, where I learned a great deal about history.

         I soon returned to Vienna to continue my singing studies there. My collaboration with the ingenious, Colorado-born pianist Russell Ryan had begun in the eighties and that partnership would persist for fifteen years and have us perform almost a hundred concerts together in Sweden, Germany and Austria.

         What my mother taught me in the classical field, Russell taught me in musical. His advice was invaluable to my training.

         I had many teachers, but Russell was the finest pianist that I ever worked with. His wisdom was dazzling.

         I was an internal and external student in the music academy from 1989 until my mother retired in 1998. I perfected my vocal training by working on all genres: opera, lieder, musical, swing and chanson. My love for Schubert was born during this time. Singing through “Winterreise” was a joy, not only for the sake of the music. Schubert’s amazing storytelling gripped me more than anything. Pieces like “Gefrorene Tränen” (Frozen Tears) gripped me so much that I cried every time I sang it.

         My film work coincided partly with my father’s work and together we performed an anthology of Edgar Allan Poe’s work, a work my father had written called The Strangest Trip. It was a joy to again stand on stage with my dad. Another show we did together, this time at the Vienna’s English Theatre, was Vienna Patterns. It was a world premiere where I played multiple roles

We sang together at the American Embassy, among others in a choir named The Protocols. I was very much supported by the Ambassador here, a woman named Swanee Hunt. She now teaches law at Harvard.

         Speeches, readings, films, solo concerts. Professional life was interesting enough. A lot of the credit of my professional discovery goes to my mother. She worked with me vocally, but also arranged many concerts with her class and this gave me a great deal of experience in performing before a live audience and developing a vast degree of stage familiarity.

         Wiener Urania, Engelmayersaal, Palais Lichtenstein, Langentzersdorf, Bisamberg, Mattersburg, Bamberg, Kalmar, Finja and a hundred other places with concerts halls and churches were filled with our many glorious voices, our group always ending the show with “Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein”. The concerts were very multipurpose and had every possible genre to its’ name. It was humane, artistic, creative, generous, friendly and very fascinating work. I became an artist during these hundreds of concerts that I sang from 1985 to 2000.

         In 1991, I was seen quite a lot on a Super Channel-show called “On The Air” with Clive Pearse. My Video-Letter “Lullaby of Vienna” won me a Blaupunkt camcorder, after which I spent many evenings being interviewed by Clive on air over the phone.

         My collaboration with Hubert Sauper proved productive as well. I translated his films “On the road with Emil” and “So I sleepwalk in broad daylight” for subtitling. Later, Hubert was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary film “Darwin’s Nightmare”.

         I had been a performer since birth. I was even informed about vocal technique. The only thing I really needed was vocal coaching and repertoire I studied pantomime. I kept on doing shows. I felt like a drifter back then, but realizing the amount of stuff I did back then and the kind of life I was leading it wasn’t all that bad.    

         In 1993, at age 23, I decided to finish my high school diploma. It took me three years and round about twenty tests and 35 000 pages of material to finish what I had missed when I decided to enrol in the academy at age 15. In 1996, I could look back at 11 straight A’s and 4 B’s and proud relatives celebrated me that day.

         I had another try at Shakespeare when I played Lysander in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, but in 1995 my work at the Vienna Chamber Opera commenced. Barbavano in Offenbach’s “The Bandits” was a colourful experience and the first of five shows I did there, that included “The Tales of Hoffman” and “Dona Francisquita”.

         A tenor in The Protocols, who now lives in China, advised me to take contact with the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien and audition for their upcoming show “Tanz der Vampire”. This was a show that the eminent Roman Polanski was directing.

         I auditioned once and was called back four times. My first trial was in February and my last call-back was in May. Receiving the news of being hired was a celebration. I was on tour with “Broadway Musical Night” at the time singing the leading baritone roles and decided to celebrate my newly found success with a trip to London. Within eight days I saw fourteen shows and managed to visit Stonehenge and Oxford as well. I was busy from early morning to late at night.

         It was my third trip. 1979, 1991 and now 1997 and each time I loved this city more. I met a young bloke in London and we became buddies. We kept contact for a long time. I didn’t know until after he died that he was lethally ill with cancer. I would go back 1999 to audition for Les Miserables at an open call.

         Once back in Vienna, I started working with Polanski. This was an interesting experience. This little man had an odd sense of humour and was a visionary in many ways. This show was wildly popular in Vienna and we played the show over 700 times to an audience of over a million people. Steve Barton, our main vampire, was the greatest actor I have ever worked with. He would give me many a tip in the characterization of the hunchback waiter Koukol. His fantasy word “Wushnuggi!” became legendary as the primal vampire command. It was Steve that really brought life to the evil vampire.  Koukol was probably the most physical of my roles. Five layers of clothing, leather, huge hump and warts, bent posture: this was the reality I lived in while running up and down the stage carrying twenty kilo props.

         During this time, I also started working with Werner Hackl, who gave me the chance to sing original music by Nancy van de Vate in “The Prince and the Maiden” and “The Death of a Hard Working Man”, where I played leading roles.

         It was also Werner Hackl that hired me to sing Raphael and Adam in Haydn’s “The Creation” in 2000.

         I was on a roll. Next up, I moved to Hamburg and played the Big Bopper and Mr. Bishop in the Rock Musical “Buddy �" The Musical”. My parents were really impressed with my first cast leading part. My dad told me that I stormed in on stage with the energy of a lion. Funnily enough, that comment would prove true for a later production.

My mother would come to see me in various shows I was doing. She loved watching the airplanes lift and land from the balcony, since I did live close to the airport. Her love of the city became profound.

         My time living with my parents in Vienna had been a first-rate and my life there had been inspiring. The amount of fascinating people we met made it stimulating. We communed in the créme de la crème of Austrian society due to my parents’ and my work. At home, we were three artists. We were not just parents and offspring. We were buddies that met at the end of the day and shared the day’s work.

         Moving to Hamburg, though, provided a new life for me. First cast positions bring attention and travelling every day across the river to work in “Buddy” made it worthwhile to journey 45 minutes with the subway each way. We had a pre-show that told the tale of Buddy’s last concert. Impersonators of Fats Domino (played by my singing teacher Jimmy Rivers), Chuck Berry (my good friend Melvin Edmondsson, who now has a blues band in Hamburg), Elvis Presley (the Australian dancer Shane Morley), Little Richard (our own extravagant genius Alvin LeBass, who later played Louis Armstrong): they were all a part of the pre-show.

         The show itself had been re-mastered and rewritten by a television director and was very hip. We had rock roadies from various rock acts as stage hands, so the stories of building up stages for the likes of Michael Jackson and Genesis circled the stage area.

         I met my ex-girlfriend on that stage. She came to see me as the Big Bopper 10 times. My assignment to choose a girl every time I sang “Chantilly Lace” always fell upon her.

I was desperately in love, so I chose her to come up on stage every time she arrived. We had a very romantic, sugary-sweet time. It had to fall apart. Once she got her position practicing law in a real courtroom, it was over. I spent a year brooding, until I met my current wife: this really was the happiest decision of my life. I met my future.

         In September of 2001, after six weeks of learning 150 songs and six shows full of scenes and choreography, I embarked on a global journey. I sang all kinds of music on a cruise that would take me to North Africa, the Mediterranean coasts, Brazil and the Carribean. Apart from for a shipwreck that occurred in November of 2001, which had us stranded back home for six weeks, the trip was an amazing lesson in getting to know the world. I saw piranhas and pelicans and dolphins. I walked the rainforests of Dominica and strolled through the streets of Rome. I saw the leading tower of Pisa and got sunburnt on the Copacabana. There was even a lady that asked me to marry her in Fortaleza, Brazil, probably thinking that I was rich. Fat chance.

         In Salvador de Bahia in Brazil I ran out of money and had to somehow find cash to pay the check. The waiter ran with me through town in order to find a money machine that that spat Euro money. We found one and I paid him. As a thank you, I invited him for dessert. Proudly, he showed his friends that he was invited to eat with a guest. He spoke only Portuguese and I spoke every possible other language but Portuguese, but somehow we managed to hold a conversation with hands and smiles and sounds.

         Once I was back in Germany, it was back to the old audition circuit and my luck was good. That summer I was cast in the Bad Hersfeld production of “Jesus Christ Superstar”. It was reminiscent of a fascinating theatre summer camp with performances in the open ruin of an old crypt, great restaurants and nice colleagues and a fantastic show with a marvellous cast.

         I travelled back to Hamburg to become a walking cover of the roles Scar and Pumbaa in the show“The Lion King”, a show that I performed in at the same place as “Buddy” for a year.

Pumbaa’s suit was worth as much as $ 30 000, so I always said that I was playing in a Cadillac. He was the favourite of all the kids. Scar was my biggest challenge yet and really did include everything: a two octave range, a gamut of emotions, 50 minutes in the make-up-chair, a half hour being wired and dressed in a custom made lion suit, security wires, jumps, seven meter falls into a pit, fast songs, sword fights and dramatic continuity. Scar was funny and dangerous and it was joy to play him.

         During this show I met my wife. I was searching the net, looking for information about the archangels. I needed various good quality facts for my trilogy “The Haunted Kingdom” and so I sat down and googled websites. One website was so stunning that I sat for three hours and looked through it, admiring every detail. Later on, she would manage the full creation of my own homepage. I wrote a mail and thanked her and she was so touched by my friendly mail that she wrote me back. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and soon enough we were seeing each other and she was seeing me on stage as well as privately. We studied at a Chakra seminar in Rheinbach together and kissed for the first time on the 6^th of January 2003.

         After undertaking a subsequent year of “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Bad Hersfeld, I spent a few months rehearsing and performing the Sprecher role in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. After thirty productions and seven years in the musical business, it was time to return to opera.

         On December 14^th 2004, I had my first show at the Music Theatre of Gelsenkirchen. Since then, I have played a thirty something roles here in addition to my choral work. Most notable among the 84 productions, 60 something roles and countless concerts I have performed have been the studying of Bartolo in “Le Nozze di Figaro”, playing Masetto in “Don Giovanni” (a role I rehearsed in opera school), Bartolomeo in “Il Furioso”, Sam in “Trouble in Tahiti”, playing a triple role in “The Bandits”, Helenus and three other roles in “The Trojans”, Zuniga in “Carmen” and a modified version of Hans Sachs in Wagner’s “Meistersinger”. My annually repeated work as solo singer for the yearly seasonal openings have seen me work in numerous settings singing with rock and pop with huge bands and orchetras. The greatest experience was performing solos from Rocky Horror Show and Lion King before a crowd of 3500 people.

 

CHARLES E.J. MOULTON

 

has been a stage performer since age eleven. His trilingual, artistic upbringing, as the son of Gun Kronzell and Herbert Moulton,  lead to a hundred stage productions, countless cross-over concerts, work as a bandleader and as an acting teacher. He is a regular contributor for Idea Gems, has written for Shadows Express, Cover of Darkness, Vocal Images and Pill Hill Press. He is a tourguide, a big-band-vocalist, a filmmaker, a painter, a voice-over-speaker, a translator, is married and has a daughter.