FROM STAR TO GROCER

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 29, 3 August 1933, Page 9

FROM STAR TO GROCER

OPERA SINGER'S CHANGE

! Tom Burke—one-time' Lancashire pit* boy and now one of the greatest operatic stars "in the world —is to abandon his art and become a grocer. "England no longer wants grand opera," Mr. Burke says. "Jazz and the talkies have killed it." So ha is going in for business. He has been appointed chairman and managing director of,a chain of. multiple shops in Lancashire. : Mr. Burkes career has always been an example of stern endeavour and indomitable (letermination to suceced. When he vas working down the pit ho used to sing on Sundays in the choir at Leigh Parish Church. Tha beauty of his voice attracted attention throughout the North7of England. He was sent to Milan to study music, and for four years.no one in- England heard of him. : - ; He came back with a European, reputation and created - aji immediate sensation by his singing with Mclba in Covent Garden. Opera. He went to the United States and became equally famous in the New' York Metropolitan Opera House. His voice is as lovely as ever. But no one .nowadays, ho says, wants grand opera. '"People may smile," Mr. Burke said to a "Sunday Chronicle" representative, "at the idea of a world-famous star turning grocer. But why should I I not do it? And I do not propose to end my days teaching singing in somo untidy little back loom!" Mr. Burke is still a young man. Ha has ambition, energy, and purpose, as anyone who has gone into the boxing ring with him is aware. He has lately been learning all there is to knowabout the provision business.