In 1902, Nellie Melba returned to Australia to crowds filling Melbourne’s streets. She had left to pursue opera in Europe, carrying an Australian voice into European elite culture. Her life also brought family loss, a troubled marriage and separation from her son. In 1931, she died suddenly in Sydney from septicaemia, a complication of what the press called “facial surgery.”
A colonial performer finds her voice
Born Helen Porter Mitchell in 1861, Melba was the eldest of 10 surviving children. Her father, David Mitchell, was a building contractor whose fortunes were rising, and a conservative Presbyterian who opposed music as a career for his daughter. Her mother encouraged Melba’s musical interests. She played instruments and sang from an early age.
In 1869, aged eight, Melba performed publicly for the first time. The audience of 700 demanded three encores. Historian Leigh Boucher, co-host of the ABC history podcast The Dead Can't Sue, said: “She already had a reputation as this growing colonial gem.”
Her father sent her to a boarding school for young women. Boucher called it “more of a finishing school rather than a robust, rounded education” and said Melba was expelled for misbehaviour. She later studied music and gained a broader education at Presbyterian Ladies College. Once, she dressed as a nun and solicited donations for a fake charity.
Her adolescence changed after her mother and beloved sister died in 1880. Her father moved the family to Mackay, Queensland, to run a sugar mill, leaving Melba, the eldest daughter, to run the household. She joined Mackay's amateur music scene and met Charles Nesbitt Frederick Armstrong, the son of an Irish baronet sent to the colonies for being a troublemaker.
They married in 1882 after a whirlwind romance and had a son shortly afterwards. Boucher described Armstrong as a wild man with aristocratic heritage and said Melba may have escaped one patriarch only to choose another. She raised their child mostly on her own and rarely performed before returning to Melbourne, ostensibly to raise her son alongside her family.
From Melbourne to the opera houses of Europe
In Melbourne, Melba trained in the bel canto style with a new vocal coach. She made her professional debut at Melbourne Town Hall in 1884, which Boucher called one of the most momentous debuts in Australian history. Her father later financed her singing classes and took her to Europe, where he was working, to help her pursue opera. Armstrong travelled with them.
Boucher said accounts described Melba arriving at breakfast on the boat to London with bruises on her face, and that Armstrong tried to control her during the journey. Her 1886 audition at Covent Garden went badly. Boucher said her husband abused her, nerves hampered her, and she lacked the right clothes or accent.
Melba went to Paris, where German opera singer and teacher Mathilde Marchesi taught her as she cared for her son and barely scraped by. Marchesi recognised her talent, improved her vocal technique, taught her European etiquette and urged her to adopt a stage name. Boucher called the change “not really a rebranding, I think, but a rebirth.”
Melba made her opera debut in Brussels in 1887 and took roles across Europe, becoming known for playing mad women. By 1890 she had established herself at London's Covent Garden. She also began an affair with Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, an heir to the French throne. Armstrong used the adultery as grounds for divorce and took their son to Texas, where he had relocated. Melba didn't see her son for 12 years. “She was not destroyed by the divorce, and she was not destroyed by the loss of her son. In fact, she sunk herself into work,” Boucher said.
Australian acclaim and a final tour
Melba returned to Australia for a successful tour in 1902. Boucher recalled crowds filling Melbourne's streets to welcome her, saying she was an Australian celebrity succeeding in European elite culture and proving Australia was “not a crass colony, but in fact a place of modernity.” One source described travelling with her on the tour as like “travelling through France with Marie-Antoinette.”
Back in London, after the press claimed she had been replaced, Melba stood in the wings and out-sang a rival at the Royal Opera House. Boucher said “an emerging celebrity culture just got the better of her.” Melba reclaimed her place at the top of opera, became beloved by the royal family and had her own dressing room at Covent Garden.
During World War I, she raised money for the war effort with a US tour and reunited with her son. Accidents also plagued the tour. Boucher said Melba became convinced Germans were targeting her because she was useful to wartime morale.
By the 1920s, when she was in her 60s, Melba decided to retire. Her many farewell concerts gave rise to the phrase “doing a Melba.” During an extended farewell tour she contracted a fever and died suddenly in Sydney in 1931 of septicaemia. Boucher said that, in a time without antibiotics, the “facial surgery” reported by the press was probably an early face lift. Fans and newspapers around the world mourned her. The New York Herald Tribune called her “the last of those soprano empresses of song” and wrote: “Doubtless the gold age of song will return, but no Melba will sing for us again.”