Charles Craig (tenor)
British opera singer
Charles James Craig (3 December 1919 – 23 January 1997) was an English operatic tenor. In the army during World War II, he joined the Entertainments Unit in India and performed operatic arias. He was encouraged by Thomas Beecham, and was included on his 1952 recording of A Mass of Life
Biography
Craig was born in Shoreditch, London on 3 December 1919. His father was labourer James George Craig and his mother Ann Rosina Gardner. He was youngest of fifteen siblings. Although he had musical leanings in his youth, both his parents died by the time he was thirteen, and in 1940 he joined the army.
During World War II, he performed operatic arias and ballads as part of the Entertainments Unit in India. He married Dorothy Wilson on 11 September 1946 in Bradford and they had 2 children. In retirement, he lived at Whitfield, Northamptonshire and on 23 January 1997, he died as a result of a heart attack.
Career
Craig received early encouragement from Sir Thomas Beecham, and sang in his 1952 recording of A Mass of Life by Frederick Delius.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Craig (tenor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.