Midhat Serbagi: Arab Classical Music in Early 20th Century America

Midhat Serbagi

(Musician)

Midhat Serbagi Passport photograph, 1923; Ancestry.com

Midhat Serbagi was born to an  unnamed mother and Abdullah Serbagi on 24 September 1892 in Tripoli, Greater Syria. According to some accounts, he was a Muslim who ran away from home when a child and traveled throughout Greater Syria while he took odd jobs. At eight years old, he reportedly performed the Call to Prayer for the Governor of Syria in Beirut. For part of this time, Turkish officials held him in a prison in Jaffe, Palestine on vagrancy charges until he was returned to his parents.  After experiencing trouble with his vision or his throat (accounts vary) Serbagi visited an eye, ear, and throat specialist, Dr. C.A.B. Peterson, a US citizen from Boston, working in Egypt.  Upon learning of Serbagi’s desire to become a musician, Peterson helped Serbagi get to the US. Serbagi immigrated to the US in 1912, worked as a tailor in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1917, enlisted in the Us military from 1918-1919, and became a naturalized citizen on September 19, 1918. During his spare time, he developed his singing under the expert tutelage with Arthur J. Hubbard and George Ferguson.



Midhat Serbagi's World War I Draft Registration Card, Ancestry.com


Serbagi's notoriety grew exponentially in the 1920s as he performed on record and in person. On May 19, 1923 he gave a joint performance at the Brooklyn Academy of music with Alexander Maloof. The next month, Serbagi, then a student, traveled back to Syria to visit relatives and then moved to Italy for a few years to study music. In the 1920s, Serbagi recorded a number of songs on Alexander Maloof’s Maloof record label. A number of sides were recorded June 1923 and January 1925. Serbagi along with Lateefy Abdou became one of the Maloof label’s most popular recording artists. His star began to rise and by 1930 he earned a living as a full-time musician. He also married Grace Ellis and the couple eventually had four sons.

Photo of Maloof #715, Richard M. Breaux Personal Collection

Photo of Maloof #714, Richard M. Breaux Personal Collection

 The rise in expense of records and phonographs, the accessibility of radios and the financial devastation of the Great Depression on the record industry forced a number of labels, including Maloof, out of business. Serbagi’s career switched to radio where he became known as one of the most prolific Arab American tenors of the early 1930s. In May 1930, Newark’s WOR broadcast a joint concert that featured Mildred Holt and Midhat Serbagi.

A returned performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music came in 1932 as a part of a series of concerts. Here Serbagi appeared unaccompanied yet proved a powerfully enduring tenor.

Things took a turn for the worse within a few weeks, however, when Midhat Serbagi faced allegations of robbery and larceny from musical patroness, Mrs. Oliver Prescott. According to news reports, one afternoon while Serbagi chauffeured his benefactress to her summer residence at North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, he stopped the car, pulled out a gun, and demanded “a promissory note for $25,000, then took $5 from her pocketbook and left her standing in the middle of the road.” Police later arrested Serbagi in his Roxbury home and took him to jail. Variations of the story appeared in the press and Serbagi maintained his innocence throughout the whole ordeal. He maintained there was never a robbery and that Prescott gave him $5 owed him. The judge, Frank A. Milliken, issued a $10,000 bond as police asked for a continuance for further investigation. 

From the 31 March 1932, Boston Globe.

What happened with Serbagi’s case is a bit of a mystery. What we can piece together involved Serbagi hiring a duo of lawyers who sought to have that case thrown out altogether based on a jurisdictional issue. The case was either thrown out, the court found in Serbagi's favor, or some else came up because by 15 May 1932, Serbagi was back in Boston's Syrian Lebanese communities singing at a patriotic event hosted by Syrian and Lebanese societies of Massachusetts. During the gathering, United States Commissioner of Immigration, Anna Tillinghast, accepted a painting titled "The Guiding Light" by Carin Rihbany on behalf of the federal government for her work on behalf of Syrian people. In attendance were several members of the Massachusetts legislature, Syrian World Editor, Salloum Mokarzel,  Maloof artists, Midhat Serbagi and Samy H. Attaya (who sang), and representatives from the Syrian Ladies' Aid Society, St. George Ladies' Aid Society of Boston, Syrian Melkite Society, the Syrian Young Ladies' Society of Norwood, and the Massachusetts Syrian Association of American Citizens, among others.  In fall, Serbagi closed out the year with a religious and social service ministry meeting at Union Congregational Church where he performed with oud and kanun accompaniment.

Determined to repair his scarred reputation, in 1933, Midhat Serbagi filed a suit against Mrs. Oliver Prescott and three lawyers for $200,000. Serbagi's suit alleged false arrest and defamation of character. Available sources offer no information of the court's decision.

Midhat Serbagi returned to newspaper reports and the Arab American music scene by 1937. A charity event for the Dahr El-Bashek Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Beirut held in Boston in April, 1937, included Serbagi on its list of entertainers. The news story noted that he performed the solo "O'Paradiso" from the opera "L'Africana." The month previous he appeared as one of two male leads in the Federal Music Projects production of "The Blind Girl of Jerusalem," also in Boston, and later that summer he was cast in the Federal Music Project "Madame Butterfly" at Boston's Sander's Theater.  Late nineteen thirty-seven found him in the cast of Puccini's "La Tosca" as Cavaravosi and a 1939 production of "Rigoletto" took him to the nearby suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, where he played the part of the Duke of Mantua. 

Serbagi's World War II registration cards lists his occupation as a tailor. Serbagi was once quoted as saying that he worked as a tailor because he knew one day his voice would not be able to hold up to the stress of singing opera. By October, 1945, he appeared in the Boston production of "Rigoletto." An article featuring Serbagi noted he had gotten his start in opera singing the part of Turiddu in "Cavalleria Rusticana." Years later, he and Grace appear in various city directories in Massachusetts and New York through the 1960s. Midhat pops up in the 1960 New York City directory. By this time, his namesake Midhat Serbagi, Jr. had made a name for himself as a viola and violin player in Boston music scene.

Midhat Serbagi’s 1974 death notice stands out because he died in Tripoli, Lebanon of heart complications. There is no mention of Grace, but three of their four sons Richard, a cellist with the American Ballet Company, Roger, an actor television and theater actor, and Midhat Jr., a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera, became performing artists.

Richard M. Breaux

© Midwest Mahjar 
Location: La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA La Crosse, WI, USA

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