Dame Nellie Melba, dubbed the “Queen of Song,” will forever be remembered as a pioneer of the Australian arts. Her contribution to our culture has forever been immortalised on the 1961 5d. ‘Centenary of Birth’ stamp. But even with Melba’s incredible vocal talents, she was very nearly destined to live out her life in obscurity as a housewife in Mackay.
During the late 1800′s, Australian women were considered second class citizens regardless of their skills and abilities. Dame Nellie Melba’s ambitions of a career as a musician were actively sabotaged by her own father, and later herhusband. But against all odds, the Australian icon prevailed.
Melba was born in Melbourne on 18 May 1861 as Helen “Nellie” Porter Mitchell (at the time, ‘Nellie’ was a common nickname for girls named ‘Helen’). Her mother, Isabella, traced her family lineage back to Spain, while her father David was a strict and traditional Scottish Presbyterian from Forfarshire (known today as “County Angus”). Her parents had reportedly migrated to Australia with a combined total wealth of around one golden sovereign.
Melba’s earliest childhood memory, she would recall in an 1898 interview with New Zealand’s Star newspaper, was of “Creeping under a table to hear my mother play the piano – my first enjoyment of music.” As a child, young Nellie worked tirelessly on developing her musical skills. “Madame Lucy Chambers, of Melbourne, gave me a course of instruction in singing. I set to work and studied very hard at mastering harmony and musical composition, and afterwards I learnt to play the organ,” Melba recalled. By the age of 16, Melba had already earned applause singing as an amateur in concerts held across Melbourne, and also played the organ at Scot’s Church in Collins Street.
But the young singer soon learned that her music lessons came with a strict glass ceiling. “My father, like many other fathers before him, held the idea of a public career for his daughter in detestation,” said Melba. But she added “…I persevered in my endeavours.”
By most accounts, the relationship between father and daughter was affectionate. But when it came to the question of a woman having a career, her endeavours were tested like a steel chisel hitting the granite of her father’s traditional values. In a telling incident, Melba recounts that “When I was sixteen, I decided to give a concert of my very own at Melbourne… But my father, learning what I had done, begged of [my friends] to keep away from the concert. And they did, with the exception of just two valiant souls.”
The tragic deaths of both her mother and sister during a horrible three month period in 1880 ended Melba’s early attempts at forging a singing career. Following the unexpected deaths, she moved to Queensland and, within two years, found herself married to a man named Charles Armstrong. Not long after they married, Melba gave birth to her first son, George.
Armstrong was the sixth son of an Irish baronet, Sir Archi-bald Armstrong. Like her father, Charles had moved to Mackay to seek his fortune growing sugarcane. The growing sugar-cane trade had been facilitated by the deforestation of lands across northern Queensland, as well as cheap labour from South Sea Islanders (known at the time as the “Kanakas”). Between 1863 and 1904, more than 50,000 Islanders had been captured or “persuaded” to arrive from across the South Pacific to work in the cane fields. They did the brutal work of cutting sugar cane for wages 80 percent lower than those paid to white workers, and suffered a death rate that was four times higher.
There was money to be made from this cheap labour, and Armstrong was the sort of character who wanted in on theaction.
Armstrong was also committed to doing all he could to halt Melba’s progress in music. Unlike her father, however, Armstrong was reportedly a man who was not above using his fists to settle an argument, including with a woman. Newspaper reports suggest that within three months of marrying his bride, he struck her with a fist to the cheek in order to obtain money. On a second occasion, barely two months after the birth of baby George, the coward reportedly assaulted her with a driving whip.
The tensions eventually led to their separation, with Melba returning home to Melbourne to pursue her career in music. Melba would later allege in court that Armstrong continued to be violent towards her even after their separation. For example, she alleged that while on a steamboat in 1886, he punched her in the side of the head with sufficient force to knock her to the ground. In Brussels in 1887, he chased after her while carrying a razor in his hand. Even as late as 1889, while in Lausanne, Armstrong in the back with a candlestick.
After escaping Armstrong and returning to Melbourne, Melba’s career began in earnest. On 17 May, 1884, she made her formal debut at a Liedertafel concert at the Town Hall.
While her husband and father had doubted her, they hadn’t counted on her work ethic and determination. “I like hard work immensely. I am never so happy as when my engagement book is overcrowded. I love singing, and studying a new opera is joyous excitement to me,” explained Melba. The years of hard work and toil finally paid off with a successful concert series.
Having paid her dues in Melbourne, Melba was ready to take on the world. She moved to London and finally found an ally in Mathilde Marchesi of Paris, to whom she became a protege. It was Marchesi who gave her the stage name of ‘Melba,’ as an Italian-sounding tribute to her birthplace of Melbourne. When asked of Marchesi’s influence on her career, Melba would proclaim “I cannot tell you what I owe to her tuition! I could never, never be grateful enough for all she has taught me.”
With the support of Marchesi, Melba made her debut as an opera singer at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels on 13 October 1887, playing the role of Gilda in Rigoletto. “It was, if I may say so, so pronounced a success that otheroffers of encouragement poured in upon me,” said Melba.
Not long afterwards, Melba began touring the great Opera Houses of Europe. She first made her debut at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, which would soon become her second home. She then won over critics in Paris, St. Petersburg, Nice, and Monte Carlo. She even managed to win over a very tough crowd in Milan through the sheer power of her voice, after a number of critics showed their initial snobbery to the Australian singer by rudely continuing their conversations at the beginning of her performance.
To read the full article, be sure to pick up a copy of Australian Stamps Professional Volume 4 Issue 4.
This is an excerpt of an article which originally appeared in Australian Stamps Professional Volume 4 Issue 4.
