VOICE LIKE YOUNG GIRL

Evening Star, Issue 22452, 24 September 1936, Page 15

VOICE LIKE YOUNG GIRL

LEADING SOPRANO AT EIGHTY-FIVE A woman of 85, who sings like a girl of 18, is the, loading soprano in the choir at St. John’s Church. New-, ton, near Porthcawl, Wales. -This remarkable woman, who had her first singing lesson when she was 70. is Mrs Elizabeth Parfitt, a wealthy widow To celebrate Iter recent eighty-fifth birthday she had a special gramophone record made of two of her songs. Mrs Parfitt looks 20 years younger than her ago. As she passed middle life her voice improved. Professors of music advised her to take lessons. On her seventieth birthday she engaged a tutor, and for 15 years she has not missed her weekly lesson. Mr Dan Price, senior professor of singing at the Royal College of Music, heard her at a concert. Antonished at the purity of her voice, he said:— “ 1 have never come across anything like it One would think she were a girl of 18, not a woman in the eighties.” Mrs Parfitt arrives at churches and concert halls in a luxury car driven by a chauffeur in livery. One of hei gramophone records, ‘ Where Mv Caravan lias Posted ’ and ' Nearer My Clod to Thee.’ J_ias I'ccii heal'd I)v Queen .Mary ami King Edward VII L