DE RESZKE'S SON A STREET SINGER

Evening Star, Issue 21518, 16 September 1933, Page 2

DE RESZKE'S SON A STREET SINGER

The only son of the glorious bass, Edouard do Jleszke, is playing a guitar on the streets of London to keep Ins wife and five-months-old son from starving. With him is Maurice Gnye, a concert singer, and the son-in-law of. a baronet. Both ■ are public school men. Any night in Soho, and any day, in ouo of the suburbs, you can see and hear them, collecting pennies m a hat. Gays wears a mask. Victor ae Keszke uses another name. There is a third man, too, a Lithuanian violinist, whose instrument is insured for £IOO. I found De lleszke in a flat near Camden Town (writes a correspondent to the ‘ Sunday Express ’). He was just starting out on his twelve hours day. “I hated my father,’’ he told me. “He sent me to a public school, but I could not stand the way lie treated my mother, who was an Englishwoman. Ho left £3s,ooo—but not to my mother or me. With my last savings I sent her to Italy. “ When I left school I went on the stage. I began with Tree and Mntheson Lang, and later toured for two years as a juvenile lead. Then _ 1 ran danco bands. But my old illness, asthma, forced me from the stage. Three years ago I married, and I have a small son Necessity drove me to the streets. By chance I met Maurice

Gay. in a cafe. One of his singing masters had been a pupil of De Reszke, so wo decided to try street work together. We have been doing it for a month, and we make enough to lira on. In a good day we make about eight shillings, and that is split among the three of us.”