Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This silent black-and-white clip shows home movie footage of soprano Dame Nellie Melba at the family property, Mitchell Estate in Lilydale just outside Melbourne, in about 1927. Melba is shown walking down a colonnaded veranda before pausing to gaze at the garden. She is then shown holding a parasol, with a dog nearby, in the driveway outside the house. The sequence concludes with Melba in the garden playing with her pet sulphur-crested cockatoo.

Educational value points

• This footage provides a rare glimpse of the private life of renowned opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861–1931), one of the most famous Australians of her generation. Melba was Australia’s first international operatic star and the media regularly reported on her activities at home and abroad. She was reputedly so conscious of her public image that she employed a professional photographer, Spencer Shier, to make this ‘home movie’.

• Melba is shown in this clip at Mitchell Estate, a property she owned near Lilydale. Melba had a long association with Lilydale and regularly spent time at the family’s country house there, where her building contractor father, David Mitchell, owned a number of businesses. In 1909, Melba purchased a property at nearby Coldstream, which became her base when in Australia. The people of Lilydale proudly claimed Melba as their own and she was buried at Lilydale cemetery.

• In 1927 when this home movie was made, Melba was spending an increasing amount of time in Australia, drawn back by family, the people, the landscape and ‘Coombe Cottage’, her home at Coldstream. While she was internationally feted, Melba never lost her affection for Australia. She wrote: ‘If you wish to understand me at all, you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian’ (http://www.museum.vic.gov.au).

• Melba’s international success followed her European operatic debut in Brussels in 1887 and by 1902 she was the leading soprano on the international stage, establishing herself as ‘prima donna’ (principal woman soloist) at London’s Covent Garden. Her voice was celebrated for its purity of tone and even quality over nearly three octaves. Born Helen Porter Mitchell and nicknamed Nellie, she took Melba as a stage name in honour of Melbourne.

• In 1928, the year after this home movie was made, Melba made her final appearances on the Australian stage, touring the country with the Melba–Williamson Opera Company. Melba held her first farewell concerts in Australia in 1924 and a performance of hers was the first item broadcast on the radio station 3LO. However, she continued to perform many ‘final’ concerts and as a consequence the expression ‘doing a Melba’ entered the Australian vernacular.