Blessed with a strong stage presence and a voice that provoked varying reactions from critics, his repertoire included such taxing dramatic parts as Tristan in Tristan und Isolde, Radames in Aida, the title role in Otello, and Canio in Pagliacci.
"[1] On the other hand, the historian John Cawte Beaglehole, who as a young man in London saw Mullings perform in The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz, found him disappointing: "... supposed to be a great tenor; [he was] a red-faced cove who sang in a strangled ineffective stupid fashion; still, you never know, he may have been drunk.
"[4] At the height of his fame, Mullings joined the staff of the Birmingham School of Music, teaching voice, and working from 1927 through to 1946.
His voice is preserved in a number of 78-rpm gramophone records which testify to the sincerity of his interpretations but highlight the limitations of his vocal technique, as hinted at politely by Cardus in the quotation cited above.
Michael Scott (author of The Record of Singing, Volume 2, published by Duckworth in 1979), J.B. Steane (The Grand Tradition, Duckworth, 1971) and many other commentators have been less guarded than Cardus, noting the constricted production and distorted vowels of his recorded performances, though even Steane's 2006 Gramophone review of the reissued British National Opera Company's 1927 Columbia recording of Pagliacci noted that "the throatiness and discomfort [of Mullings’s Canio] in the upper range are to some extent offset by a warmly personal timbre and intense dramatic commitment.