NEWS She’s known for her international prowess and unparalleled success as a woman, mother and musician in a time of female suppression. Her name was Dame Nellie Melba. With the help of the LILYDALE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Star Mail has looked back at her life but more so, her impact on Lilydale.
Lilydale’s queen of song Born as Helen Porter Mitchell in 1861, this year marks 160 years since this remarkable woman first graced the earth. Although she grew up in the Mitchell family home in Doonside Richmond, it was in fact the Lilydale countryside she would eventually call home. Her ties to the town that is Lilydale started with her father, David Mitchell. The first lot of blocks of land in Lilydale became available for sale in May 1860 and two years later David Mitchell had purchased Briarty’s Station at Steele’s Flat which now forms part of Killara. During the summer months, the Mitchell family would retreat in the Yarra Valley, escaping the heat and dust of the city. Melba and her siblings roamed the land, swam in the Yarra River and rode horses, as free as can be. From the early age of six, Melba had discovered her voice by humming as constantly as breathing. And it would be this voice that would take her across the world to Europe in 1886. Although she initially struggled, once people had discovered the power of her operatic voice, fans throughout the world and at home went into a frenzy. After touring Europe and performing in many different operas, Melba set her sights on America. Unable to witness her magnificence in person, Lilydale residents had to hear of her successes through The Lilydale Express newspaper. On 24 January 1896, they wrote: “Madame Melba is having a more than royal progress through America, where the wondrous beauty of her voice and the singular charm of her personality have aroused our Transatlantic cousins to an intensity of enthusiasm that is best described as ‘Melbamania’.” When Melba finally returned home in 1902, ‘Melbamania’ followed. What was meant to be a quiet, unnoticed return to her childhood home, was instead a grand welcoming by thousands of townspeople. “Melba received a welcome fit for royalty, 100 hosemen escorted her into town, there were presentations, speeches and cheering crowds of adoring fans. Their local lass had triumphed on the world stage,” Lilydale Historical Society president Sue Thompson said in her research. The first time the town of Lilydale heard the voice of a star was at the Athenaeum Hall in Castella Street in 1904. Although unable to attend in person, Melba sang at a benefit concert for James Fahey who was killed by a rock fall at Cave Hill Quarry and the town could listen through the gramophone. They would have to wait just five years to see Melba sing in concert. Melba’s first concert in Lilydale was in 1909 as part of her five-state outback tour. As with all of her concerts at the Athenaeum, it was to raise funds for worthy groups – Lilydale Fire Brigade, Lilydale Benevolent Society, Lilydale Baths and Lilydale Brass Band. “She didn’t just give opera, she gave concerts,” Ms Thompson said. “She was the pop star of that era.” But she was also a pop star with a big heart and used her voice to help raise money for a number of projects, schools and charities every time she returned to Australia. Just some of those were the Lilydale Patriotic Fund, Warburton Vicarage, Red cross, St John’s Parish Hall, Lilydale, Melba Park and the Soldiers Memorial Hall at Healesville. It was after her 1909 tour of Australia that Melba purchased her first home in her country, that being a property in Coldstream which she called Coombe Cottage. “Coombe was and is a large country cottage and was where Melba could relax with her family and entertain her friends and visitors mailcommunity.com.au
who included royalty, governors, governorsgeneral, artists, singers, opera students, local families and during World War I, wounded soldiers,” Ms Thompson wrote. When World War I broke out in 1914, Melba was here in Australia. Determined to raise money as she had done so often in the past, Melba and her fellow president of the Lilydale Red Cross, Amy Syme, took to knitting socks for the troops. When things weren’t going so well in knitting, Melba decided to do what she did best sing. She organised concerts all throughout Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America. The total amount raised is not known but it is expected to be hundreds of thousands of dollars which she donated to both the Australian Red Cross and The Belgian Relief Fund, in support of her beloved Belgian counterparts. In 1927 Melba was awarded the G.B.E., the Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in recognition of services to the Commonwealth of Australia. Melba was the first civilian to receive this award. Her final concert at the Athenaeum Hall which was dubbed her ‘farewell concert’ was held on 30 May, 1928. But soon that remarkable woman and singer would come to the end of her time impressing the world of her beauty. She died peacefully on 23 February 1931 in Sydney. Crowds gathered once more to honour the life of Dame Nellie Melba, as her coffin passed through the streets of Lilydale, for her to be laid to rest in the Lilydale Cemetery. In 1981 Melba received the D.B.E. Dame Commander of the British Empire in recognition of her fundraising during the war. Her memory now lives on in Lilydale with roads, parks, schools and support services named after her - her name will never die. High praise rang for Dame Nellie Melba her whole career and a speech, quoted in The Lilydale Express in July 1912, made by Sir John Fuller sums up the lady that was. “Madame Melba has been called a good many names. She has been called a queen of song; she has been called a guardian angel and she has been called a fairy godmother,” Mr Fuller said. “My friend the spoiled darling of the courts and democracies of Europe has had one dream in life, and that has been to bring grand opera to her native land. That dream has been realised, I think I may say, beyond her expectations.” To read more about Dame Nellie Melba, head to https://nelliemelbamuseum.com. au/ or to learn about Lilydale’s history go to https://lilydalehistorical.com.au/
Nellie Melba at her Coldstream home Coombe Cottage.
Pictures: LILYDALE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The procession upon Nellie Melba’s return to Lilydale in 1902. Tuesday, 4 May, 2021
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