SINGING MILL GIRL

Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1928, Page 4

SINGING MILL GIRL

DIVA’S PROTEGEE. LONDON, Nov. 19. A romantic story is wrapped up in tlie personality of Miss Betty Blackburn. tlio dramatic soprano, who is delighting Stoll Picture Theatre audiences. It is not many years since she was a tired little Lancashire mill girl, rising at dawn or before, tramping to the mill with hundreds of others, and toiling hard. She knew something about singing, even at the age of thirteen, when she entered the mill. When, as a child of eight or nine, she was singing in the streets at the maypole festival an-' collecting badly needed pennies and perhaps a sixpence or two, a schoolmaster was struck hv the quality of her voice, and gave her singing lessons. Then a wonderful opportunity came. A concert was announced in aid of repatriated soldiers. The schoolmaster was asked if he knew a singer wli could help. Tie nominated Betty. The “Singing Mill Girl ” created a sensation. \

Extraordinary things, however, were going to happen to Betty. When she was reading some gossip paragraphs one day she saw it stated that Mine. Calve, tlie great prima donna, who was singing at the Queen’s Hall, would take as a protegee any girl with a promising voice and " make a Carmen of her.” She wrote to Mine. Calve, who heard her sing. “ To niv unbounded delight she said she would take me as a pupil, and I started right atvav. Then she had to go abroad on her tour. That was in 1920, and she has not been hack since; hut before she went she discovered that T was singing by holding my head in a peculiar way. and suspected something wrong with my throat. Rh sent me to Dr Lloyd, Caruso’s doctor, and he advised an operation. “ Tlie result was wonderful. Tim passages of my throat wore cleared, mid, to my utter astonishment, instead of my voice being a contralto I found it had been turned to a soprano.”