The Lancashire Caruso: the forgotten fame of Thomas Burke

How many British opera singers have a Wetherspoons pub named after them? Not many – but here’s one I stumbled upon when cruising along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal to the former silk, cotton and coal town of Leigh in Lancashire…

The Thomas Burke is a rather grand building which originally opened in 1908 as the 2,000 seater Grand Theatre and Hippodrome. After many name and function changes it finally closed in 1989 and lay empty until it was revived by Wetherspoons and named after the highly acclaimed operatic tenor Thomas Burke, who was born in Leigh on 2 March 1890.

Puccini apparently said of Thomas Burke: ’Never have I heard my music so beautifully sung’. In fact the words are carved onto his headstone in Carshalton, Surrey where he died in 1969.

The eldest of nine children, Tom had little option than to work in the silk factory from the age of 12, and then to follow in his Irish father’s footsteps at just 14 to work in the coal mines where he was a ‘lasher-on’ – fastening coal trucks onto a steel rope as they were brought up from the pithead. It is said that he earned the name ‘Minstrel Boy’ as he used to sing to his fellow workers.

Outside of work there was more music: like so many of these gritty northern towns, the brass band was a focal point of the community. Here Burke played the cornet – and clearly rather well, winning the silver prize as a cornet soloist in a national championship at The Crystal Palace. His mother’s sewing machine was pawned to buy him a piano and he also joined the local church choir.

At the age of 19, Burke walked the 60 miles round trip to Blackpool to hear Enrico Caruso sing. He queued for several hours before the performance and then realised that this was his dream – and his ticket out of industrial Lancashire.

Burke’s first stroke of good luck came when the tenor who was due to perform in Handel’s Messiah for a local music society fell ill – and  Burke stood in at the last minute. Reviews were good – and he received a fee. 

After studying at the Manchester College of Music he auditioned for the Halle Choir where the orchestra and choir conductor Christian Neilsen recommended he sing for the London impresario Hugo Gorelitz; he ended up with a contract and the opportunity to study at London’s Royal Academy of Music. It was here that he had the opportunity to sing before Enrico Caruso and who told Burke that ‘You must go to Italy and there you will find your voice.’