Dame Nellie Melba

DAME NELLIE MELBA - 'When I stand on the platform of the Melbourne Town Hall for my first concert. I shall feel the greatest emotion of my whole life'

A musical trivia question: if the girl born Helen Porter Mitchell in 1861 hadn't later changed her name to Nellie Melba, would her fame still have reached such dizzy heights? Answer: probably, though her international association with her home town - Melbourne - would not have been as strong. Try to imagine Sinatra calling himself Franky Hoboken or The King performing as Elvis Tupelo.

Melba played the patriotic card wisely and well. Despite the best efforts of some local muckrakers she never packed up to live permanently in exile. 

"If you wish to understand me at all,"she once proclaimed, "you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian."It was a new country; she was its first star on the world stage.

Her triumphant homecoming tour in 1902 was like Kylie, Nicole and Elle rolled into one. And she milked it for all it was worth, declaring: "I know that when I stand on the platform of the Melbourne Town Hall for my first concert I shall feel the greatest emotion of my whole life."Her appearances were sensations. Her songs ranged from Handel's Sweet Bird, in which she could show off her vocal gymnastics in imitation of a nightingale, to arias by Mozart and Verdi and the mad scene from Donizetti's opera Lucia Di Lammermoor.

But the show-stopper, often the encore, was Home, Sweet Home. Her habit was to accompany herself on piano when she sang it, invariably reducing many in the audience to sobs. It became a signature tune; one of her most common requests. She sang it into a telephone microphone in 1920 for Britain's first international wireless broadcast.

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Melba in Melbourne singing Home, Sweet Home is a masterpiece of programming. But the wonderful thing about the song is that it gets a cheer (or tears) anywhere. Part of Melba's appeal lay in her willingness to perform what people wanted to hear. Her concerts and recordings, by and large, were all greatest hits packages.

She stuck with some songs throughout her long career. Her first recital, at the Richmond Town Hall when she was six, included Comin' Thro' the Rye - a favourite of her father, a whiskery Scot. This - like Home, Sweet Home and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot - became a perennial. But Home was the one she could always rely on.

Although born in Richmond, she regarded Lilydale as home turf. Her father had been a shire councillor and owned the limestone quarry there. In 1909 she bought her property at Coldstream, close to Lilydale.

In 1902, Lilydale had greeted her as "The Divine Songstress whose Magic Tones have attracted a universal admiration and commanded the highest appreciation"- which, to her, was no more than she deserved. Performances of Home anywhere near Lilydale couldn't fail.

One biography describes her spotting a local farmer near the end of a concert at Coldstream. She asked him for a request; he opted for Home. Later, greeting him warmly, she told him: "I thought you'd have blisters on your hands, the way you clapped."

But in some ways it was all a glorious con-job. Lyrics for the song that is now a musical cliche were written by John Howard Payne, an American. Payne was many things: an actor; playwright; and diplomat. But he tends to be remembered, if at all, only for Home, Sweet Home.

Home is wonderfully simple: 11 lines with an elementary rhyming pattern. There's delicious irony in the thought of Melba - feted on several continents, a sucker for royalty and titles, and the proud owner of a country estate - taking a deep breath and beginning:

Mid pleasures and palaces,
Tho' we may roam;
Be it ever so humble,
There's no place like home . . .

It was never really a Melbourne song. But intrinsic to Melba's art was an ability to transport audiences to wherever she wanted them to be. Besides, home is where the heart is. And the former Helen Porter Mitchell always thought of herself as a Melbourne girl. - Alan Attwood is a Melbourne writer. Melba appears in his next novel.  

It was no accident that Dame Joan Sutherland,  a Sydney girl,Melba's lineal descendant  and an Australian diva, also sang Home, Sweet Home as an encore in her farewell shows in 1990. There has always been rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. As an unbiased Sydneysider I think Dame Joan's performance is the better one.