Madame Melba, 1922

Dame Nellie Melba GBE (Helen Porter Armstrong, née Mitchell, 1861-1931) was a world-renowned soprano. Raised in Melbourne, at the age of twenty she was taken by her widower father to Mackay, where she met Charles Nesbit, a man who, according to her biographer, 'agreeably combined exceptional skills as a rough rider with the recommendation of a gentle birth'. She had a son with him, but after a year she left him, returning to Melbourne to study under Pietro Cecchi. Making her way to Paris she became a pupil of Mathilde Marchesi, on whose advice she adopted the name Melba, derived from her native city, Melbourne. After making her début in Brussels in 1887, aged 26, she appeared regularly at Covent Garden, where she maintained a private dressing room and gave her final performance in 1926. Over the same period, mobbed everywhere by fans and enjoying the attention of many lovers, she made sensational tours of the USA and Europe. Partly resident in Australia from 1909 onwards, she sang the national anthem at the opening of Parliament House, Canberra in May 1927, during the period in which she made so many farewell appearances that across Australia the phrase 'doing a Melba' came to mean making repeated announcements that one is leaving, without actually departing.

Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2015