Melba: The Voice of Australia

Nellie Melba remains the most famous woman Australia has produced.

She is one of the few names with national mythological status; she ranks with Ned Kelly, Don Bradman and Phar Lap in the popular imagination. Everyone can tell you a Nellie Melba story.

Therese Radic has sifted fact from fantasy and shows that even the facts about Melba are quite remarkable. Indeed Melba was a fat soprano, vain, vulgar, imperious and a snob; she was a runaway wife, a divorcee and mistress of the Pretender to the French throne. 

But, more importantly, Melba was a shrewd self-made woman, financially and personally independent. She managed her greatest asset - her voice - and her earnings cleverly so that the voice lasted the distance of a long and strenuous career, and her investments enabled her to enjoy life on a grand scale. She dictated the terms of her own life and rose to unsurpassed heights in her chosen profession.

She was the friend of royalty, the rich and the powerful; she was even honoured by the English who generally despised their colonial offspring. For years Melba had the world at her feet, yet she was proud of her origins and chose to come home, first on tour, then to settle and retire.

Nellie Melba was truly the fuIfilment and the symbol of the Australian dream.