Passing of Nellie Melba’s granddaughter

Sad to note the death in Australia at 92 of Pamela, Lady Vestey, at her home, Coombe Cottage at Coldstream in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

She was the adored granddaughter of the great Australian diva, Dame Nellie Melba. Coombe Cottage had been built by Melba in 1910, and Lady Vestey lived there, guardian of Melba’s legacy, for the last four decades of her life.

I met her some ten years ago at a talk on Melba’s recordings at the Athenaeum Theatre in nearby Lilydale. I had been advised that she was quite deaf and would probably not hear much of it. But, of course, the difficulty in hearing among the elderly is at its most severe in social situations, where there is a lot of ambient noise. I noticed this chatting with her before the talk.

Then, when I started, the theatre fell silent and her face turned towards me. And when I played the first of the Melba recordings – the “Mad Scene” from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor – she positively beamed with pleasure. Clearly she heard it well enough, the memory of her grandmother’s voice flooding back.

We have lost a gracious lady, one of the last links with that Golden Age.

Melba at 150

In two weeks time from today (19 May) it will be the 150th birthday of Helen Porter Mitchell. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, and was destined to become the leading opera singer in the world in the Golden Age - and a household name - Dame Nellie Melba.

There were a number of special qualities that separated Nellie from her contemporaries:

With the help of three teachers – Ellen Christian, Pietro Cecchi and Mathilde Marchesi – and the requisite “10,000 hours”, she developed a technique that enabled her to perform at the highest level over four full decades. “Salvatore, viens,” Marchesi called to her husband on first hearing the girl, “j’ai trouvé une étoile.”

In an age when married women were expected to give up work, she decided that instead the husband should go.

She had a wonderful sense of pitch and always sang in tune.

She learned many of her greatest roles with the composers themselves – Verdi, Massenet, Gounod, Puccini among them. And she promoted avant-garde songs by Debussy, Duparc, Chausson and others.

She took responsibility at all stages for managing her own career, bringing in a series of helpers, but never delegating the authority.

She was a brilliant entrepreneur, always ready to do what was necessary to maintain her profile and fill houses. “There are plenty of duchesses, but only one Melba,” she said.

“If you wish to understand me, you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian,” she wrote. This attitude enabled her to break through the rigid barriers of British society of her day, speaking plainly with everyone at every level.

She was a catalyst in building the newly-emerging recording industry, negotiating a pioneering royalty arrangement.

When she died in Sydney in 1931, her coffin was carried by special train to Melbourne, stopping at towns and villages on the way so that crowds of people could pay their respects. Her grave at Lilydale carries a brief phrase from her most famous role, Mimì in La bohème: “Addio, senza rancor.” Farewell, no hard feelings.

Here she is at 65, singing that very aria , recorded live at her Farewell from Covent Garden in 1926: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEhr_3E3XEA