PIT KILLED STAR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 91, 26 June 1946, Page 2

PIT KILLED STAR

FORMER MINER STUDIED SINGING IN ITALY When Ben Williams, destined to become principal tenor in many British opera productions, handed in his miner’s lamp for the last time 27 years ago in his native Swansea valley, he believed he had turned his back on the pits for all time. He studied in Italy, toured Australia, and went through the hard school of the Carl Rosa Opera Company. He became known to his musical friends as one who knew and performed well more operatic roles than any other British singer. Recently he died, a victim of the pits he had left as an eager young man of 25. His friend, Norman Allin, a bass singer, told a reporter: “He sang for the last time in July last year, when he appared with the Carl Rosa Company in Sheffield. “He complained that his .breathing was becoming difficult. A specialist afterwards told him not to sing any more. “A little later he telephoned me to say that his trouble had been diagnosed as silicosis—the lung disease to which anthracite miners are particularly liable.”