OPERA STAR TO GROCER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 178, 31 July 1933, Page 11

OPERA STAR TO GROCER

TOM BURKE’S NEW ROLE. FORMER PITBOY’S CAREER. Tom Burke —one-time Lancashire pitboy and now one of tho 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 th c talkies have killed it.” So he is going in for business. He has been appointed chairman and managing director of a chain of multiple shops in Lancashire. Mr. Burks’s career has always been an example of stern endeavour and indomitable determination to succeed. When he was working down tho pit he used lo sing on Sundays in tho choir at Leigh Parish Church. The beauty of. his voice attracted attention throughout the North of England. He was scut to Milan to study music, and for four years no ono in England heard him Tom came back with a European reputation and created an immediate sensation by singing with Melba in (’overt Garden Opera. Ho word to thc United Slates and bucaine equally famous in the New York Metropolitan Opera House. His voice is as lovely as ever. But. no one nowadays, he says, wants grand opera. “People may smile,” Mr. Burke said to a Sunday Chronicle representative last month, “at thc idea of a worldfamous star turning grocer. But why should I not do it ? Ami Ido not propose to end .my days teaching singing iu some untidy little back room.” Mr. Burke is still a voting mail. He has ambition, energy and purpose, as anyone who has gone into tho boxing ring wit'i him is aware. He has lately been learning all there is to know about the provision business