Nellie Melba

Australian classical and opera singer

• Born: May 19, 1861
• Birthplace: Richmond, Australia
• Died: February 23, 1931
• Place of death: Sydney, Australis

A celebrated operatic soprano, Melba was a major recording artist of the first decade of the twentieth century, and her numerous recordings are among the earliest in the legacy of singing on record.

The Life

Nellie Melba, born Helen Porter Mitchell, had parents who were musically inclined and provided her with piano and singing lessons in her youth. At the age of eighteen, she began operatic study with Pietro Cecchi. In 1882 she had a brief and unsuccessful marriage with Charles Armstrong, with whom she had a son, George, born in 1883. An extraordinarily ambitious young woman, Melba had natural vocal flexibility and instinctive musicality.

In 1886 she moved to Europe for further vocal training with Mathilde Marchesi, who also encouraged her to change her stage name to Nellie Melba. (Melba was selected in tribute to her native city of Melbourne.) In 1888 she began her operatic career, and her success was immediate. By the turn of the century, Melba had become widely known as one of the greatest operatic stars of her generation. A consistently successful career spanned both sides of the Atlantic. Melba was knighted by King George V in 1918. Her farewell concert took place in London in 1926, when the singer was sixty-five years old. After her retirement, she moved back to Australia, and she became president of the Melba Memorial Conservatorium in Melbourne.

Melba died suddenly in 1931, after five weeks of an unexplained illness. (Her doctor suggested that she had contracted an infection from eating watercress in London, although this does not seem credible.) She was a hero in her native country, and more than five thousand Australians attended her funeral.

The Music

Melba’s creative output can be studied through her operatic roles and studio recordings. In fact, she is one of the first major vocal artists whose legacy is preserved through early audio recording technology.

Early Career. After study with Marchesi in London, Melba made her operatic debut on October 13, 1887, at the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851). In the following year, she appeared at Covent Garden as Lucia in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) and at the Paris Opéra as Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet (1868). The critics and public welcomed her with rave reviews, complimenting her beautiful tone quality and excellent vocal technique.

Maturity. In 1903 Melba sang Lucia at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and her success in that role began an association with the Metropolitan Opera that lasted until 1910. In America she also sang for Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera and in Chicago. Now in the prime of her career, Melba became particularly well known for her portrayal of the Charles Gounod heroines: Marguerite in Faust (1859) and Juliet in Roméo et Juliette (1867). She was prepared for both roles by the composer. A brief and unsuccessful stint into the realm of Wagnerian opera, specifically Brünnhilde in Siegfried (1876), found Melba in a repertoire too heavy for her light soprano, forcing her into four months of vocal rest. In her final years, she began to concentrate increasingly on the role of Mimi in Puccini’s La Bohème (1896). She sang her final concert at Covent Garden in London on June 8, 1926.

Recorded Legacy. Melba’s legacy is preserved primarily through her recordings. In 2002 Naxos released the complete Gramophone Company recordings of Melba on four compact discs. These sessions were derived from her 1904 London recordings. In 2004-2005 Naxos released the complete American Victor Recordings of 1909-1910 on an additional three compact discs. Together, these seven compact discs preserve 148 recordings, and they collectively comprise the vast majority of Melba’s recorded legacy.

The London recordings are broken into three distinct sessions. The 1904 recordings were made for the London-based Gramophone & Typewriter company. Most of these recordings are either accompanied by or conducted by Landon Ronald. Highlights include recordings of Mimì’s arias and a delicately wrought rendition of George Frideric Handel’s “Sweet Bird That Shunn’st the Noise of Folly” from L’allegro (1740). A second round of recordings occurred in London and Paris, from 1908 to 1913. By this time, recording quality had improved immensely, and these sessions offer a better aural portrait of the great Melba before her vocal decline. Her Gounod and Massenet recordings from this era are particularly cherished. A final disc captures performances from 1921 to 1926. While quality has improved by this time, the recordings reveal an aged diva in the final days of her career.

The 1909-1910 American sessions offer several items of interest, particularly the Lucia di Lammermoor and Hamlet mad scenes; more Puccini recordings, with a riveting “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca (1900); and the “Depuis le jour” from Gustave Charpentier’s Louise (1900) is perhaps her finest singing on record. The American sessions showcase Melba’s greatness, and they are perhaps the best recordings available from the prime of her career.

Musical Legacy

The public was infatuated with Melba during her lifetime, and her recordings provide only an echo of what the true Melba must have been. During her career, critics noted the purity and evenness of her voice from bottom to top, and some of her recordings exemplify these attributes. Melba’s voice had the remarkable ability to captivate her audience, although she was not a strong actress. Melba toast and the Peach Melba dessert were named in her honor. She ranks with Enrico Caruso as one of the most important figures in the early history of opera on record.

Principal Works

operatic roles: Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, 1887; Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, 1888; Lucia in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, 1888; Juliette in Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet, 1891; Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, 1895; Brunhilde in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried, 1896; Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, 1902; Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello, 1908; Mimi in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, 1911.

Bibliography

Hetherington, John. Nellie Melba: A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968. Hetherington’s book is a reliable biography that sorts fact from fiction, and it has an excellent selection of photographs.

Melba, Nellie. Melodies and Memories: The Autobiography of Nellie Melba. Introduced and annotated by John Cargher. Melbourne, Vic.: Nelson, 1980. First published in 1925 and written by Melba, this book offers insight into the diva’s personality. Self-mythologizing, she does not provide an accurate account of her career, but it makes for engaging reading.

Moran, William R. Nellie Melba: A Contemporary Review. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985. This is an exhaustively comprehensive guide to all the research on Melba, including her recorded legacy, and it reprints Melba’s writings on the art of singing.

Radic, Thérèse. Melba: The Voice of Australia. St. Louis, Mo.: MMB Music, 1986. Radic discusses new theories about the cause of Melba’s death, and she elaborates on many topics other biographies mention only briefly (such as Melba’s experience with singing Wagner). The helpful appendixes chronicle every performance of Melba’s career.

Steane, J. B. “Nellie Melba.” In Singers of the Century. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press, 1996. This is an excellent short essay on Melba’s career and recorded legacy, from the point of view of an esteemed London Times voice critic.