He was the youngest son of Freeman Thomas and Amelia Frederick, daughter of Colonel Thomas Frederick. His elder brothers included
Freeman Thomas, a noted cricketer who was the father of
Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon,
Viceroy of India; and
Sir Charles Thomas. He was born at Ratton Park,
Sussex, and educated at
Haileybury College. He was intended for the
Civil Service, but delicate health interfered with his studies, and in 1873 he went to Paris to cultivate the musical talent he had displayed from an early age. Here he studied for two years with
Émile Durand. In 1875, he returned to England, and in 1877 entered the
Royal Academy of Music, where for three years he studied under
Ebenezer Prout and
Arthur Sullivan, twice winning the Lucas medal for composition. At a later period he received some instruction in orchestration from
Max Bruch. His first published composition was a song,
Le Roi Henri, which appeared in 1871. An early
comic opera,
Don Braggadocio (libretto by his brother, C. I. Thomas), was apparently
unfinished; some of the music in it was afterwards used for
The Golden Web. A selection from his second opera,
The Light of the Harem (libretto by Clifford Harrison), was performed at the Royal Academy of Music on 7 November 1879, with such success that
Carl Rosa commissioned him to write
Esmeralda (libretto by
Theophile Marzials and
Alberto Randegger), dedicated to
Pauline Viardot, produced at
Drury Lane on 26 March 1883. (Creator cast: Georgina Burns (Esmeralda):
Barton McGuckin (Phoebus):
William Ludwig (Frollo): Leslie Crotty (Quasimodo): Clara Perry (Fleur-de-Lys): Leah Don (Lois): J. H. Stilliard (Chevreuse):
Ben Davies (Gringoire):
G. H. Snazelle (Clopin).) This contained the very successful aria "O, vision entrancing". Two years later the opera was given (in German) at Cologne and Hamburg, and in 1890 (in French) at
Covent Garden. On 16 April 1885, at
Drury Lane, Rosa produced Thomas's fourth and best opera,
Nadeshda (libretto by
Julian Sturgis); a German version of which (libretto by Friedrich Fremery) was given at
Breslau in 1890. A fifth opera,
The Golden Web (libretto by
Frederick Corder and
B. C. Stephenson), an
opéra bouffe slighter than its predecessors, was produced (after the composer's death) by the
Carl Rosa Opera Company at Liverpool on 15 February, and at the Lyric Theatre, London on 11 March 1893. In spite of some positive critical attention, interest in the opera was short-lived. Besides these dramatic works, Thomas's chief compositions were a
psalm,
Out of the Deep, for
soprano solo and chorus (London, 1878); a choral ode,
The Sun Worshippers (Norwich, 1881), and a
suite de ballet for orchestra (Cambridge, 1887). A cantata,
The Swan and the Skylark, was found in
piano score among his manuscripts after his death: it was orchestrated by
Charles Villiers Stanford, and produced at the Birmingham Festival of 1894. ==Suicide==