Nino Piccaluga

Building a Grand Opera Company

Melba, photographed by Ionides, London. National Library of Australia, Canberra.
The 1924 opera season in Australia organised by Dame Nellie Melba and J.C. Williamson Ltd. was not the first. That had been in 1911. And it was not the last, which was in 1928. But it was substantially bigger, more ambitious than 1911. Overall, eighteen operas were performed (compared to twelve in 1911). Critics and audiences in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide revelled in the overall quality of the company, although there was criticism that the only work new to Australia was Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, which was already twenty-eight years old.

The deal between Nellie Melba and ‘The Firm’, J.C. Williamson’s, to form a Grand Opera Company to perform in Australia in 1924 was announced to the world on 29 January 1923. And, on behalf of The Firm, their London rep Nevin Tait travelled to Europe with the putative artistic director of the new company, Henry Russell, and Dame Nellie in search of the principal singers for the projected twenty-plus operas that the company planned to give. It was expected that the little gang would search in Milan, Naples, Rome, Paris, Brussels and Vienna.

The Firm had dominated the performing arts in Australia since it opened in 1882, employing shoals of talented Australians and bringing in important actors, singers and musicians from overseas. Five Tait brothers¹ merged their business with The Firm in 1920.

Henry Russell first met Nellie Melba at a dinner party he organised in London in 1896—over a quarter of a century earlier—the other guests including the novelist George Moore and Melba’s future partner, the Australian playwright Haddon Chambers. At that time, Russell was principally a singing teacher in London (Melba sent him pupils). Later he was an impresario, managing the Boston Opera Company for many years. His half-brother, Landon Ronald, was a regular conductor and accompanist for Melba. Henry had had a distinctly on-off relationship with Melba.

In the event, according to Russell’s memoirs, Melba, Russell and Nevin Tait went first to Paris, then Naples, the ‘capital of the world’s music’ in the eighteenth century according to Count Charles de Brosses, and home of the famous San Carlo opera house. In Naples, aside from the young soprano Lina Scavizzi, they drew a blank, so they went next to Milan, home of the prestigious Teatro alla Scala, where, Russell wrote, ‘practically the entire company were engaged’.

Melba left the two men in Naples, sailing on the Orsova, having been taken ill. She returned via Plymouth to London, where she had a ‘serious operation’.²  It appears therefore that Melba herself had little role in auditioning and choosing the majority of the selected singers. However, she made a good recovery and on 1 June appeared at Covent Garden as Mimì in La bohèmewith the British National Opera Company, the king and queen in attendance (George V and Mary). She and her Rodolfo, Joseph Hislop, sang in Italian, while the rest of the company and the chorus sang in English. That midsummer season at Covent Garden, the BNOC was well-stacked with Australasians, including Florence Austral, Rosina Buckman, Beatrice Miranda, Leah Russel-Myre, Elsy Treweek, Fred Collier, Browning Mummery, Horace Stevens, conductor Aylmer Buesst and Melba—very much the cream of their generation.³

Initially, it had made sense for the scouting team to have discussions with the BNOC’s management about the possibility that the BNOC might be hired lock, stock and barrel for the forthcoming Melba-Williamson Australian season in 1924. In the end, this proved impossible, resulting in the European recruitment tour. Aside from recruiting many of the leading singers for the company in Milan, Russell and Tait also approached the musical director of La Scala, the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, to lead the new company. Toscanini declined their offer and instead they hired two other highly regarded conductors, the Argentinian Franco Paolantonio and the Italian Arnaldo Schiavoni.

Argentinian conductor Franco Paolantonio. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Italian conductor Arnaldo Schiavoni. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Clearly, their time in Milan was well-spent, and by early May they were able to announce that they had secured many of the leading singers (most of whom were Italian):

• Up-and-coming twenty-five-year-old soprano Lina Scavizzi, who had made her name in the title role of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini and was currently singing Tosca at the San Carlo in Naples, where she was heard and chosen by Melba (before the diva retired hurt)
• Soprano Augusta Concato from Verona, who had been engaged by Toscanini at La Scala in 1921
• Concato’s husband, tenor Nino Piccaluga, a favourite at La Scala from 1922
• Dramatic tenor Antonio Marques from Barcelona, who was singing Otello at the Teatro Dal Terme in Milan when Russell and Tait first heard him
• Baritone Apollo Granforte was an established top-flight star—at La Scala and in Rome, Naples (where he became a close friend of Pietro Mascagni), Paris, Buenos Aires, Malta and Switzerland; he turned thirty-eight during the tour
• Another baritone, Mario Basiola, was announced as booked, but in the event did not travel
• Lyric tenor Dino Borgioli—twenty-six at the start of the tour—came to La Scala (and Toscanini) soon after the end of the First World War, building over time an international career; married to the Australian soprano, Patricia Mort⁴
• Polish mezzo-soprano Aga Lahoska, whose real name, simplified for Australian readers, was Aga Lachowska de Romanska; she had built a strong reputation at the Teatro Reale in Madrid and the Liceu in Barcelona
• Basso Gaetano Azzolini, who was famous for his comedic buffo roles at La Scala
• Umberto Di Lelio, another basso, who sang at La Scala from 1921, his repertoire there including Klingsor in Parsifal, Sparafucile in Rigoletto and Valaam in Boris Godunov

Cover of souvenir program for the Melba-Williamson Grand Opera Season, Melbourne, 1924

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Toti Dal Monte. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Lastly, but most importantly, Russell and Tait signed up the rising-star lyric soprano, Toti Dal Monte. It had become clear to the two men that, although Melba had been promised to the Australian public as singing in every production, in 1924 she would be sixty-three-years-old and in unreliable health—and they had to find adequate cover for her, not just another soprano, but a star name. Toti had made her debut at La Scala (no less) in 1916 in the first performance of Zandonai’s Francesca di Rimini and in 1922 under Toscanini she was sensational there as Gilda in Rigoletto and Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor. She was going to sing at the Colon in Buenos Aires before coming on to Australia. She would be thirty-years-old by the time she arrived in Australia. But how would the two divas get on?

Early reports in Australia of the recruitment drive in Milan referred to the ‘courtesy and cooperation’ of Toscanini. ‘It is one of the finest companies organised in any part of the world,’ wrote Toscanini to Sir George Tallis at Williamson’s, ‘for every artist is superb, and has won fame in their respective roles.’ However, later reports suggested that Toscanini was concerned that his company at La Scala had been seriously depleted.

Aside from the lead singers, Russell and Tait announced that they had signed up the other roles that an opera company would need in Australia in 1924. However, several of the names they announced were not in the final roster—these being the chorus master, ballet mistress and stage director—but two who did come were the prompter, Amleto Tornari and his mezzo-soprano wife Carmen Tornari, who would also provide leadership for the chorus. In the event, the chorus master was Roberto Zucchi, the ballet mistress Ines Arari Farinetti, and the stage director, her husband Carlo Farinetti.  

Over the coming months, other singers were hired, filling particular roles in the envisioned program of operas:  

• Contralto Phyllis Archibald, the only British principal in the company; a pupil of Blanche Marchesi, she had first sung at Covent Garden in 1908, then again in the early 1920s with the BNOC and was now performing in Monte Carlo
• Soprano Aurora Rettore, hired to sing Musetta in La bohème, Micaela in Carmen and other roles
• Baritone Luigi Ceresol, who was to sing Scarpia in Tosca and other roles
• French baritone Alfred Maguenat, who had sung with Melba in La bohème as Marcello at the reopening of Covent Garden in 1919, and
• Another Frenchman, bass Gustave Huberdeau, who had been Benoit in the same production at Covent Garden
• Baritone Antonio Laffi, who sang mostly secondary roles
• Edmondo Grandini, another baritone, who had sung principally at Rome and Parma (where he was born)
• Tenor Bettino Capelli, who joined the company in Sydney; he had sung leading roles with the Gonzalez Opera Company in Australia in 1916
• Tenor Luigi Cilla, who had specialised in comprimario roles in Italian houses
• Tenor Alfred O’Shea, an Australian with Irish parents, who had been supported in Britain by impresario Nevin Tait
• Another Australian, soprano Stella Power, the ‘Little Melba’; she was spotted by Melba in 1917, who arranged her debut and took her to America.

A third conductor was added to the company roster in the form of Frank St Leger, who was billed by the local press as an Australian but was in reality born in India to British parents and who later became an American citizen. Before the war he had toured Australia as pianist with the Cherniavsky Trio, after which he served for two years in the Australian army, then was accompanist-conductor for Melba, mainly in America.

Conductor Frank St Leger. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Ballet mistress Ines Arari Farinetti. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

A curious addition to the company in Australia was the Russian Prince Alexis Obolensky, a bass who had been taught by Henry Russell. He had been a captain in the Imperial Russian Army in the First World War, but after the revolution had fled, penniless with his family, first to France, then to New York. He was to sing minor roles with the company and was frequently noted among the celebrities in the audience.

In all, the company claimed to have brought seventy singers to Australia from Europe, among them the twenty-three principals detailed above. But it was clear from the outset that, aside from Melba, there were three that stood out above the rest—soprano Toti Dal Monte, tenor Dino Borgioli and baritone Apollo Granforte.

A final significant figure to join the party was Nellie Melba’s new friend, the English novelist Beverley Nichols. They first met when Nichols was covering a shock-horror adultery case for his newspaper in London. He sought out Melba to get a comment and they developed an immediate rapport. The consequence was that he accompanied her to social events. She talked extensively with him about her life—an autobiography ghosted by Nichols was discussed—and he accompanied her in Australia for the 1924 tour. Their relationship prompted speculation, one anonymous letter describing Nichols as a ‘Pommie gigolo’, although he was in reality gay.

In the months running up to the opening of the season in Melbourne, the Australian press was fed relentlessly with puff stories on a daily basis about the operas to be performed and the singers who would sing them. These stories were provided to the press by the company’s publicity manager, in Sydney, Claude Kingston, who later wrote: ‘I thought I knew something about theatrical publicity but alongside Melba I was a tyro.’⁵ 

But this was not all smooth sailing: the prices of tickets were to be far in advance of what the Australian public was used to. Of course they were, responded Russell and Tait. This had been a much more expensive enterprise. Secondly, the press stirred up much antipathy and trade-union wrath when it realised that not only the principal singers, but also many of the chorus were to be imported from Italy. We need seasoned professionals in the chorus, not Australian amateurs, responded Russell. In fact, while most of the male chorus came from Milan, most of the women came from Melba’s Albert Street Conservatorium in Melbourne.

Lastly, in the days immediately before the opening, Henry Russell made a speech at a Rotary Club luncheon in Melbourne which lambasted musical comedy as a grossly inferior form and talked about scantily-clad girls with their naked legs running around the stage. Even for Australia in 1924, this was all seen as unnecessarily patronising and sexist and Melba will have realised immediately that the resulting publicity took the public’s attention away from the little matter of the opening of her company—with Melba as Mimì. It was the beginning of the end for Russell.⁶

The majority of the company, including most of the Italians—both principals and chorus—arrived in Melbourne on the Mongolia from Naples on 24 March 1924, just five days before Melba and La bohème opened.

Dame Nellie Melba and Signor Farinetti, the Stage Director, rehearsing Faust at His Majesty’s Theatre on 26 February 1924

Frank Van Straten collection

Scene from La bohème: Gustave Huberdeau (Colline), Nellie Melba (Mimi), Dino Borgioli (Rudolfo) & Antonio Laffi (Schaunard). Photo by Spencer Shier.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Opening week in Melbourne

The Melba-Williamson Grand Opera Company’s season finally opened with Puccini’s La bohème at Her Majesty’s Theatre (renamed His Majesty’s for the duration) on Saturday 29 March 1924. La bohème was first performed at the Teatro Reggio in Turin in 1896 with a star cast conducted by Toscanini. Initially, it was a failure. It came first to Australia in 1901, brought by Williamson’s Italian Opera Company with Dalia Bassich (from Trieste) as Mimì and Carlo Dani as Rodolfo.

The opening was billed as a ‘Gala’ and the glitterati of Melbourne and beyond were there in force, including the Governor-General of Australia and Lady Forster, the Governor of Victoria with the Countess of Stradbroke, the Governor of Queensland (Sir Matthew Nathan) and several other VIPs.

More widely, the audience (especially in the galleries above the stalls) exhibited ‘great enthusiasm’ for the performance. Melbourne’s The Age gave it a lengthy review,⁷ Melba noted particularly for the freshness of her singing (allowances being made for her advanced age) and for the vigour of her Mimì—no fragility there. In the early part of her career, Melba had been trained as, and become famed for, her extraordinary brilliance and flexibility in so-called bel canto roles, in operas by Rossini, Donizetti and others, but as the years passed, this repertoire became more difficult to maintain at the level of excellence that her public had come to expect of her, while, fortuitously, the newly arrived composers wrote music less demanding technically, the new style becoming known as verismo.

And Melba seized on to these new operas—by Mascagni, Leoncavallo and especially Puccini’s La bohème. She was to learn the role of Mimì with the composer and personally built its popularity internationally.⁸ She had previously sung the role in Australia in 1911 with the first Melba-Williamson Company. It became so strongly associated with Melba that by 1924 it was natural that she should open the season of her new opera company in it and take the lead role.

However, The Age’s reviewer was far less effusive about the other principals: as Rodolfo, Nino Piccaluga was not Caruso nor Bonci (Caruso’s current major international competitor), and he was replaced from 19 April by the Sydney tenor Alfred O’Shea; as Musetta, Aurora Rettore was not Rosina Buckman; the conductor Franco Paolantonio was not ‘Julius Knoch’, who had conducted the Quinlan Company from Britain in 1912. Knoch seems to have been misremembered by the critic—he doubtless meant Ernst Knoch.

The remainder of the principal roles were dismissed summarily by The Age: Di Lelio’s Colline was ‘capable’ (replaced by Gustave Huberdeau from 19 April); Ceresol’s Marcello was ‘interesting’ (and was replaced by Alfred Maguenat from 8 April); Laffi’s Schaunard ‘bright’; and Azzolini’s Benoit and Alcindoro ‘could have got more humour’ out of the roles. Altogether, not a ringing first endorsement of Russell and Tait’s recruitment drive. However, the chorus was ‘first class’.

Two evenings later, on the Monday 31st (Sundays being still closed to theatrical entertainments in Australia), saw the introduction of two of the major stars recruited in Italy—Toti Dal Monte and Dino Borgioli—both taking the lead roles in Donizetti’s tragic opera Lucia di Lammermoor, Toti in the title role and Dino as her lover Edgardo. Based on a Walter Scott novel, Lucia di Lammermoor was first produced at the San Carlo theatre in Naples in 1838 and swiftly established itself as one of Donizetti’s finest and a great testsof bel canto singing for the lead soprano. It became a favoured vehicle for the greatest sopranos, including Melba, and had been introduced to Australia in 1855 at the Royal Victoria Theatre in Sydney with Theodosia Guerin as Lucia.⁹

According to The Argus, Toti received ‘tumultuous applause’ for her performance, which supported well that of co-star Borgioli:

Her musicianship is well-nigh perfect... Apt acting and expressive gesture were aids to the understanding of Signor Dino Borgioli’s well-graced Edgar, who sang with untiring energy and buoyancy in an expressive voice of ringing quality.

Russell and the Taits must have been delighted, not to mention Nellie Melba, who appeared on stage at the end next to the young pretender, announcing: ‘I am a proud woman tonight, because it is in a little measure through me that this great artist has come here.’ Lucia had been one of her signature roles earlier in her career, a great test of vocal prowess, and both Toti and Dino had come through that test triumphantly.

Others of the imported principals also did well enough said The Argus: Grandini’s Enrico was ‘a conscientious piece of work’, and Di Lelio’s Raimondo ‘brought weight of voice and presence’. The chorus ‘did very effective work’, especially the women, ‘their freshness and purity being delightful’. It must have been a great relief to the whole management team that a Melba company without Melba could do so well.

The following night (Tuesday 1 April) brought the third opera and the third of the star imports, baritone Apollo Granforte as Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca, together with the young soprano Lina Scavizzi, who was specifically hired to sing this title role. It was first performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1900 with Hariclea Darclée in the title role.

It is not clear why Melba never sang the role of Tosca on stage, but she did record the most famous aria, ‘Vissi d’arte’, four times (all of which survive). Melba had planned to sing Tosca during her first Melba-Williamson tour in 1911 but was unwell. She was replaced by the Polish soprano Janina Wayda (with John McCormack as Cavaradossi), who successfully led the first performance of the opera in Australia. The play La Tosca (by Victorien Sardou) had previously been given in Australia in 1891, in French by the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt.¹⁰

Lina Scavizzi as Tosca. Photo by Spencer Shier.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Nino Piccaluga as Cavaradossi. Photo by Spencer Shier.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

While Apollo Granforte’s Scarpia was very well received, it was Scavizzi’s Tosca that stirred up the greatest enthusiasm. The unnamed but perceptive critic for The Argus reported:

Tosca is so much more an acting than a singing role that it was a real appreciation that the audience found so satisfying a personality allied to the exposition of the exacting part as that of Signorina Lina Scavizzi … She captured the house immediately by the charm of her superb vocal art and her abundant histrionic resources.

Apollo Granforte as Scarpia was greeted by The Argus more modestly but with sincere admiration:

There may be insinuating treachery, sardonic humour, naked cruelty and even bestial triumph in the delineation of this repellent character … Signor Granforte, a strikingly powerful actor, evidently conscious of this pitfall, presented his Scarpia with reticence, yet without losing the requisite note of authority.

In tenor Piccaluga’s return to His Majesty’s stage after his success at the opening on Saturday, the third major role, Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, was also well received:

Signor Nino Piccaluga was in the fullest sense of the word a dramatic tenor. At times, his vocalisation illustrated, to an extreme degree, the fundamental principle that song is, as a matter of fact, glorified speech.

And Arnaldo Schiavoni was well appreciated for his conducting, his debut for the company. Piccaluga was to return the following night (Wednesday 2^nd) for a repeat performance of Rodolfo in La bohème, again with Melba as Mimì.

Photo by Spencer Shier

Photo by Spencer Shier

On the Thursday (3^rd) was the first outing in the tour for Verdi’s Rigoletto with Toti Dal Monte as Gilda, Dino Borgioli as the Duke of Mantua and Apollo Granforte as the jester in the title role. This was another of what had been Melba’s signature roles, the one in which she had made her glorious debut at La Monnaie in Brussels in 1887. So this was a second perceived mountain for Toti to climb.

However, during the rehearsal period on the day before Rigoletto, an ’unhinged’ man burst into Toti’s dressing room at His Majesty’s. She screamed. Nevin Tait and a gaggle of singers rushed to her rescue, but the man had gone before they arrived. He was later apprehended, surrounded by chorus members. It all made good newspaper copy.

Toti’s performance reinforced the impression that here was a singer of special gifts. The Arguswrote:

Innocent Gilda must be, and innocent, even when in a way she has lost her innocence … But there was no insipidity in her portrayal. The beautiful love she has for her father gave the figure strength … ‘Caro nome’ probably proved an astonishment to many who have heard it sung in galloping fashion … Last night it came out quietly and mostly softly.  

‘As Rigoletto Apollo Granforte was highly impressive,’ The Argus continued: ‘He made the jester by no means a buffoon. He was a jester … apparently sick to death of playing the fool, and when expected to be amusing, merely cynical.’

And it seems that, as the Duke, Dino Borgioli followed Granforte’s lead by being ‘more serious and cynical than usual. Umberto Di Lelio was ‘grimly impressive’ as Sparafucile (replaced by Prince Obolensky on 26 April) and Antonio Laffi ‘cursed well’ as Monterone. Some minor roles were taken by Australians: Doris McInnes, Ruby Dixson, Ruby Miller and Victor Baxter.

The seventh night of the first week, Friday 4^th, saw the presentation of the third opera by Puccini, Madama Butterfly. Like Tosca, Butterfly was another Puccini role that Melba never sang on stage, although she did maintain that he composed it with her in mind. Generally, the view has been that it did not suit her voice, although it may also have stretched her acting skills beyond their limits, and doubtless she knew this.

It had first been performed in Australia in March 1910, given by JC Williamson’s Opera Company at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. Butterfly/Cio-Cio-San was sung by Bel Sorel, Susuki by Rosina Buckman, Pinkerton by John Zerga and Sharpless by Antonio Zanelli. Initially, at La Scala in Milan in March 1904, it had been a fiasco, but it was revised and re-presented, conducted by Toscanini, at Brescia three months later, where it was hugely successful.

It is significant that the critic for The Argus leads off his/her review with a positive assessment of the production and design—‘a dream of loveliness’—not of the singing. Butterfly saw the debut of another Italian soprano, Augusta Concato, and The Argus was distinctly ambivalent:

Signorina Concato’s was an original and faintly fanciful reading of the character. She was more at home in the dramatic situations which develop as the story progresses than in those bright passages in which the impersonation of the carefree Butterfly’s enraptured ecstasy calls for a light touch... Her vocalisation was at its best in comparatively quiet passages.

And Concato’s real-life husband, Nino Piccaluga, who was Pinkerton, was also greeted somewhat equivocally: ‘… an ungrateful part, which the tenor played on straightforward lines.’ Luigi Ceresol ‘sang admirably and with unfailing sympathy’ as Sharpless, while Carmen Tornari’s Susuki was ‘a most telling piece of work’. Victoria’s Ruby Dixson ‘was completely successful on all counts in the by no means easy part of Kate Pinkerton.’

The great and the good of Victoria and Australia more widely were there again, as they had been throughout the first week. There had been five operas in six nights, only La bohème being repeated. Box office takings had been excellent in spite of the high price of tickets. Audiences were thrilled by the performances and critics generally positive, especially towards the star imports—Toti Dal Monte, Dino Borgioli and Apollo Granforte—and the home hero, Nellie Melba.

Would this momentum be sustained through a long season with many more operas to come?

To be continued

Note on Spencer Shier

Many of the photographs included here were taken by the Melbourne-based portraitist Spencer Shier. He was born in 1884 and died at his home at Toorak in 1946. At his studio in Collins Street, he specialised in sittings with politicians, actors, singers, dancers and other society figures. During the Melba-Williamson Company’s season in Australia in 1924, he appears to have had special access to the artists and the productions. He also took movie film of Nellie Melba at home at Coombe Cottage in 1927. A portrait of Melba by Shier is on permanent display in her ‘artistic home’, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Endnotes

1. The Tait brothers were Charles, John Henry, Nevin, Edward, Frank

2. ‘Intestinal’ says John Hetherington  

3. Especially if one adds two other Australians who performed with the BNOC at Covent Garden around that time: Eda Bennie and Gertrude Johnson

4. Borgioli toured Australia again in 1938

5. Kingston went on to outline the story of Melba arriving in Sydney and telling the assembled press that she was covered in fleabites from the train—a ruse in order to stoke up publicity; however, the event had actually happened two years earlier

6. Russell also forbade Melba from singing Margérite in Faust—a serious mistake—and Melba ‘let him go’

7. Each opening in the Melba-Williamson season of 1924 was reviewed by half a dozen and more newspapers, principally in Melbourne and Sydney; the two leading Melbourne papers, The Age and The Argus, routinely gave most space; overall I judged The Argus’s critic there to have most insight and best judgement

8. See Theatre Heritage Australia - Melba and the Rise of La bohème

9. She was born Theodosia Yates in 1815, then was successively Mrs Stirling, Mrs Guerin and Mrs Stewart

10. And the La Tosca play was repeated in Australia after Sarah Bernhardt’s tour by Mrs Brown Potter (1890), Nance O'Neil (1900) and Tittell Brune (1906)

Photo by Spencer Shier, from Her Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne (2018) by Frank Van Straten. Photo of Melba used as intro image by Baron Adolph de Meyer, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Ten and a half more weeks in Melbourne

Melba as Desdemona. Photo by Spencer Shier. State Library Victoria, Melbourne
The second week (commencing Saturday, 5 April) in Melbourne started with repeats of Lucia di Lammermoor, Tosca, Rigoletto and La bohème (with Melba), including a first matinée on the Saturday. During the week, Nellie Melba announced her support for a permanent opera company in Australia with its own permanent orchestra, a wish that was not fully to come to fruition for half a century. At the same time, The Idler in Table Talk revealed for the first time: ‘I hear that Melba is writing a book about her life, with some assistance from Mr. Beverley Nichols.’

The opera being rehearsed at the time was Verdi’s Otello with Melba in her second role with the company, Desdemona. It opened on Saturday evening (12 April). In the run-up to the opening, Melba gave an interview to The Herald in Melbourne, where she reminisced about meeting Verdi in Milan after her performance of Gilda in Rigoletto at La Scala. He came backstage, she said, and they arranged that the composer would come the following morning to hear her Desdemona. This he did. ‘My child,’ he said (according to Melba), ‘you have made me very happy. You give it beautifully. It is perfect.’

She told Verdi that she had studied his music with the famous Neapolitan songwriter, Tosti, which Verdi thoroughly approved. There has never been any corroboration of this oft-told story, but it has the ring of at least some truth.

Otello had been first performed in Australia (in Sydney) in September 1901 by J.C. Williamson’s Italian Opera Company with Dalia Bassich as Desdemona, Vincenzo Larizza in the title role and Ferdinando Cattadori as Iago. Melba had previously sung the role in Australia with her Melba-Williamson Company of 1911. It had been first produced in February 1887 at La Scala in Milan with Romilda Pantaleoni as Desdemona and Francesco Tamagno as the Moor. It is widely seen as a radical development in Verdi’s art and a fine setting of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Of Melba’s opening performance, The Argus reported:

What one wants most of all in a Desdemona is a clear purity of tone, a purity which never loses character even in moments of emotion; and Melba, above all others, represents that ideal of pure singing. At the magic of her touch the tragic last act is transformed into a thing of infinite pathos.

However, of the Spanish tenor Antonio Marques, in his first outing with the company, ‘one could not help wishing for a more responsive Otello … The fine voice with which nature has endowed the tenor is hardly heard to full advantage.’ The critic also did not enjoy his vibrato. Nevertheless, Apollo Granforte’s Iago ‘approaches the ideal of drama through music.’ The Argus continued:

His is a very satanic Iago, crafty and plausible—a finely conceived character study full of graphic touches. Signor Granforte is a very powerful actor, who never forgets that he is a singer.

All the minor roles were appreciated, as were the chorus and the orchestra under conductor Arnaldo Schiavoni, and, at the curtain, Melba paid tribute to chorus master Zucchi and stage director Farinetti.

There were to be two other first performances following the opening of Otello: The Barber of Sevilleon Wednesday (16 April) and Carmen on Saturday 19^th. Both of these new productions had lead female roles—Rosina and Carmen respectively—composed for mezzo-sopranos, but frequently taken over by ladies with higher vocal ranges.

From time to time the company gave Gala Concerts, one such being at His Majesty’s on Good Friday Night, 18 April. It included Toti Dal Monte (who sang the ‘Carnival de Venise’ Variations of Benedict), an aria from La forza del destino sung by Lina Scavizzi, Antonio Marques singing ‘O paradiso’ from L’Africana by Meyerbeer, and a somewhat premature ‘Christ is Risen’ by Rachmaninov sung by Prince Alexis Obolensky.

The Barber of Seville was introduced on 16 April. It was the company’s first comic opera, providing another sparkling bel canto role for Toti Dal Monte. Rosina was a part that Melba had sung for years, as now did Toti, although, as discussed, Rossini had composed the lead role for a mezzo, not a soprano.

The introduction of Rossini’s Barber to Australia in June 1843 is more complicated than it might appear, principally because the music seems to have been a mixture of Rossini and the English composer, Henry Bishop. Opening in Sydney, the Rosina was mezzo Louise Gibbs. It had originally been premiered (‘a scandalous failure’, with tenor Manuel Garcia as Count Almaviva) at the Teatro Argentina in Rome in 1816 before rapidly gaining popularity worldwide.

While many of the bel canto operas staged by Melba’s company were treated as unnecessarily old-fashioned by Australian opera critics of 1924, The Barber of Seville was welcomed as a old friend, still worthy of respect as a result of its ingenious libretto (by Sterbini, based on Beaumarchais) and ‘fresh and piquant’ music. Of course, Toti Dal Monte had been specifically hired to sing the lead roles in the bel canto operas (now vacated by Melba), and she was greeted as Rosina most warmly, ‘reaching a level of great beauty and charm’. The Argus continued:

Dal Monte is truly a coloratura singer of the most accomplished kind, but she is much more than that. Her florid passages become, strange as it may seem, the medium for the vivid expression of moods and wayward fancies, and all the time her artistry is undeniable and irresistible.

On top of that:

Signor Dino Borgioli has done nothing more distinguished in conception and execution than his debonair impersonation of the amorous Count. His singing had clearness and precision that cannot be estimated too highly.

Luigi Ceresol’s Figaro was rated more highly than had been his previous Marcello and Sharpless performances, and Gaetano Azzolini was a gratifying comic Bartolo. ‘Among the best things of the evening’ was the ‘La calumnia’ of Umberto Di Lelio’s Basilio.

Aga Lahoska as Carmen. Photo by Ruth Hollick.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Caricature by Tom Glover

The Bulletin,15 May 1924, p.34

In the case of Carmen, Melba never stole the title role from the mezzos, being content to sing the secondary (soprano) part of Micaela. It was an opera first performed in Australia in May 1879, given in Melbourne by W.S. Lyster’s company (with soprano Rose Hersée as Carmen and Annie Stone as Micaela). This was just four years after its premiere at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where the title role was taken by a genuine mezzo—Célestine Galli-Marié. It was to be Bizet’s last and most successful opera.

In 1924 The Argus referred to Carmen as ‘that old favourite’ and greeted the Melba company’s production as ‘an immense popular success.’ And, in her Australian debut in the title role, Aga Lahoska, a true mezzo, was a triumph:

Mdlle Lahoska’s treatment of the title role was upon lines which threw it into high relief, making it picturesque, vivid and alive.

However, the Micaela, Augusta Concato, ‘could not achieve the naturalness, perhaps because her singing was not sufficiently easy, to conform to the mood of the music.’ (Stella Power took over the role from 31 May.) Apollo Granforte was ‘a gay and reckless Escamillo’, while Nino Piccaluga was a ‘gallant, passionate’ Don José.

A full week after the introduction of Carmen, on Saturday 26 April came the premiere of Verdi’s Il trovatore. It had first been performed in Australia at the Princess’s in Melbourne in October 1858, five years after its premiere in 1853 at the Teatro Apollo in Rome. The first Australian cast included Maria Carandini as Leonora, Julia Harland as the gypsy Azucena. Leonora was not a role that Melba ever attempted. Perhaps she thought it too heavy for her voice, along with the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, Aida and other roles.¹

The Argus’s critic noted that the opera had survived in the repertoire despite its ‘incoherency’, an observation quite as apposite to this day. The Argus was most taken by Phyllis Archibald’s Azucena, Archibald’s debut with the company, ‘a great artistic and popular success.’ It seems most likely that Melba had first become familiar with Archibald’s work when the latter sang major roles with the BNOC at Covent Garden in 1922, Melba herself joining the company the year later.

With regard to Lina Scavizzi’s Leonora, The Argus was less enthused: ‘She hovers over her high notes at times, fluttering this way and that, instead of remaining serenely poised.’ Singing the troubadour Manrico, Antonio Marques was also given an ambivalent report: ‘Some of his singing was quite effective; some of it, on the other hand, was marred by extreme laziness of definition.’ As usual, Apollo Granforte was greeted with critical applause, and Umberto Di Lelio’s Ferrando was ‘eloquent’.

There was eager anticipation in the press for the third (and final) role that Nellie Melba would sing in the season—Marguérite in Gounod’s Faust, which opened on the following Friday (2 May). It had first been performed in Australia in Sydney in 1864 with Lucy Escott as Marguérite, Henry Squires as Faust and Henry Wharton as Mephistopheles. It was toured through Australia and New Zealand by Fanny Simonsen and her daughters from 1872. Premiered in 1859 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, it swiftly became an international success.

Characters from Faust with Alfred Maguenat as Valentine, Gustave Huberdeau as Mephistopheles, Dino Borgioli as Faust, Rita Miller as Siebel, Vera Bedford as Martha, and Melba as Marguerite. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Melba first saw Faust aged twenty-three, when it was given by the Montague-Turner Company at Mackay in Queensland in 1884. She was later coached in Paris in the Marguérite role—the singing by the composer and the acting by her friend Sarah Bernhardt. The consequence was that she became fêted for her performance of the role at the Paris Opéra in the 1880s before going on to sing it at Covent Garden, St Petersburg, Stockholm and elsewhere. It was a role that Melba sang to great acclaim in Australia in 1911.

She returned to the opera in Melbourne on 2 May 1924, greeted as ‘a Marguérite who can sing, not merely a singer trying to be Marguérite.’ The Argus went on:

Last night … Melba sang wonderfully, sang, indeed, nobly, after nature’s own method. One could not but be amazed at the spirit of sheer youthful joyousness that animated the whole interpretation in its earlier stages.

However, ‘the Mephistopheles of M. Huberdeau is not, as a matter of fact, a very debonair or persuasive individual’, while Dino Borgioli’s Faust was ‘rather conventional’. The Queensland mezzo Vera Bedford was ‘in character as the foolish old Martha.’ For the first time on the tour, Melba’s friend and accompanist Frank St Leger conducted.

Phyllis as Delilah in Samson and Delilah

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Toti Dal Monte as Amina in La Sonnambula. Photo by May Moore.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The opening of Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah took place on the following evening (3 May). It had first been staged in Australia during the Melba-Williamson Company’s previous tour in 1911 with Eleanor de Cisneros as Delilah and Franco Zeni as Samson. It had had its premiere in 1877 in Weimar. It was not an opera that The Argus’s 1924 critic warmed to greatly: ‘Saint-Saëns music says little and rarely goes below the surface of things.’

Phyllis Archibald had been specifically chosen by Melba to sing Delilah—and she was a great success in the role at His Majesty’s:

Miss Archibald gave the full flavour of sensuous tone to all the favourite songs of ‘that accomplished snare’, Delilah,² and was able to assert her best form very effectively in music which suits the warmth and richness of her tones.

Meanwhile, ‘Senor Marques’ large voice, with its open tone, is just right for the innocent strong man, and he looks the part too.’

Five days later (8 May) came the opening of another bel canto favourite of yesteryear, Bellini’s La sonnambula. Its premiere in Australia had been one of the earliest—at the Royal Victoria Theatre in Hobart in October 1842, where Amina was Theodosia Stirling (mother of Nellie Stewart), Elvino was tenor John Howson and Rodolpho was the impresario Frank Howson. From 1866, Amina was a favourite role of Fanny Simonsen and her daughter Martina. La sonnambula had been premiered in 1831 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan with two of the greats—Giuditta Pasta and Giovanni Rubini.

Curiously, Melba never seems to have sung (or recorded) anything of Bellini’s, but Toti Dal Monte was already famous in Italy and South America for her Amina. The opera itself was at its greatest depth of unfashionableness in 1924. ‘For sheer vapidity and inaneness La sonnambula is hard to beat,’ pronounced The Argus. Nevertheless,

Signorina Dal Monte has given us ample evidence this season that fioritura is not the lost art many imagine it to be. In a role made famous by such brilliant exponents as Jenny Lind, Patti and Tetrazzini, she gave us still more evidence last night. Her every phrase has a meaning of its own …

And ‘Signor Borgioli’s delightfully fluent and easy singing helped invest [Elvino] with a great deal more humanity than naturally belongs to it.’ Rodolpho was ‘very capably suggested by Umberto Do Lelio. Soprano Doris McInnes from Narrandera in New South Wales ‘did very well in the small part of Teresa.’  

Nino Piccaluga as Radames in Aida. Photo by Spencer Shier.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Dino Borgioli (Hoffmann) and Lina Scavizzi (Antonia) in The Tales of Hoffmann. Photo by Spencer Shier.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

As it entered its seventh week in Melbourne, the management of the Melba-Williamson Company proudly announced that the twelve operas so far given had attracted 100,000 audience members. No prediction was made on the ultimate financial outcome.

As previously noted, Melba had sung and abandoned the title role in Verdi’s Aida. It needed a singer with a larger voice, a dramatic soprano, and for the new production in Melbourne, which opened on Thursday 15 May.

Its first (rather lacklustre) outing in Australia had been in September 1877 at the Opera House in Melbourne with Augusta Guadagnini as Aida, Margherita Venosta as Amneris and Eduardo Camero as Radames. It had been famously premiered in Cairo to open the new Opera House on 24 December 1871, having been commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt.

It opened at His Majesty’s on Thursday 15 May with Augusta Concato, specially recruited for the part, in the title role, with Phyllis Archibald as Amneris and Nino Piccaluga as Radames. The Age led off with its admiration for the ‘sumptuous’ production and design, followed by its surprise that Concato was so good, following her disappointing Butterfly and Micaela:

Many possibly looked to get an Aida of an unsatisfactory kind. But they were agreeably disappointed. The Concato conception of Aida was no masterpiece of operatic art, but it was certainly effective, sometimes in a high degree.

Phyllis Archibald’s Amneris was expected to be first-rate, and it was: ‘[Her] treatment was in quasi-Wagnerian style, and aside from her un-royal uneasiness in the first part of her scene with Radames, all finely done,’ while unsurprisingly Nino Piccaluga’s Radames was ‘on heroic lines’.

The next opening in the Melba-Williamson Company’s Melbourne season, on Wednesday 21 May, was the double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci—‘Cav and Pag’. Although they had first appeared two years apart in 1890 and 1892, it was not long before the two works were harnessed together as a double bill. Effectively, together they came to represent a doorway from bel canto to verismo.

Cavalleria rusticana opened at the Teatro Costanzi with Gemma Bellincioni as Santuzza, while Pagliacci was premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan with Adelina Stehle as Nedda. Nellie Melba was an early adopter of Leoncavallo’s opera, singing Nedda in the Covent Garden premiere of Pagliacci in 1893 (with Fernando De Lucia as Canio). But she never sang Santuzza. The two operas were first presented in Australia at the Princess’s Theatre in Melbourne in September 1893 by the Williamson and Musgrove Italian Opera Company—although performed on separate nights. Italia Del Torre sang both Nedda and Santuzza. The Canio (to Del Torre’s Nedda) was Fiorello Giraud, original creator of the role.

On the opening night at His Majesty’s (21 May): in Cavalleria rusticana, Santuzza was Lina Scavizzi, Turiddu was Nino Piccaluga, Edmondo Grandini was Alfio, and Doris McInnes was Lola; and in Pagliacci: Aurora Rettore was Nedda, Antonio Marques was Canio, Apollo Granforte was Tonio, and Antonio Laffi was Silvio.

After thirty years, they had become ‘inseparable twins,’ said The Argus. ‘[They] may be occasionally crude and coarse in their mode of musical expression, but one cannot deny the vitality they owe to the vigour of their treatment and the directness and dramatic intensity of their plots.’

In ‘Cav’, the Santuzza of Scavizzi was ‘full of distinction … deeply moving’, while Piccaluga’s Turiddu was sung ‘with zest and energy’, and ‘excellent work’ was done by Grandini’s ‘bluff’ Alfio, also by Doris McInnes and Vida Sutton, who was Mamma Lucia.

In ‘Pag’, Granforte’s prologue ‘deservedly won for him a tremendous ovation,’ and Marques’s Canio had ‘intensity without falling into the pit of exaggeration.’ As Nedda, Rettore ‘sang with great warmth and a good deal of charm.’ But perhaps the greatest plaudits of the evening were awarded by The Argus to the conductor, Franco Paolantonio. While the orchestra was ‘forcible, even violent, it was always controlled and exact and regardful of the singers.’

Toti Dal Monte as Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann. Photo by Spencer Shier.

Her Majesty’s Theatre Archive, Melbourne

The penultimate work produced in Melbourne by Melba-Williamson (opened 24 May) was Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Its premiere had been in February 1881 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris with Adèle Isaac, who sang all three principal soprano roles—Olympia, Giulietta and Antonia. It was not produced in Australia until 1912, brought by the Quinlan Opera Company with Lalla Miranda as Olympia, Edna Thornton as Giulietta and Enrichetta Onelli as Antonia.³ It was never part of Melba’s repertoire.⁴

The new production had three different sopranos in the leading roles: Toti Dal Monte as Olympia, Aga Lahoska as Giulietta and Lina Scavizzi as Antonia. Dino Borgioli was ‘an ardent and very gullible’ Hoffmann. ‘Signorina Dal Monte … deserves thanks not only because she sang so brilliantly,’ wrote The Argus, ‘but also because she kept the comic business within bounds.’ Meanwhile, Mdlle Lahoska’s Giulietta ‘vividly suggested the voluptuous personality of a thoroughly heartless courtesan’, and ‘Signorina Scavizzi has ample stamina for the hectic death scene of Antonia.’

An unusual occurrence on 2 June was the baptism at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne of the infant daughter of mezzo Carmen Tornari and her husband, prompter Amleto Tornari. The girl was christened Nellie Melba Tornari and Dame Nellie was an intended godmother. However, as she was delayed, Toti Dal Monte stood in for her. As a four-year-old, the daughter returned as the child in Madama Butterfly in 1928.

The final offering from the Melba-Williamson Company in their first Melbourne season, opening on 14 June, was Donizetti’s comic opera, Don Pasquale. With it, the company returned to the heartland of bel canto opera, a work which again showcased the special gifts of the company’s A-team, with Toti Dal Monte as the young widow Norina, Dino Borgioli as Ernesto, Apollo Granforte as Dr Malatesta and Gaetano Azzolini in the title role.

It had been premiered at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris in 1843 with an all-star cast including Giulietta Grisi, Giovanni Mario, Antonio Tamburini and Luigi Lablache. It came first to Australia (as a whole) in January 1856 at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne with Maria Carandini as Norina and Paolo Borsotti as Pasquale.⁵ Again, it was never sung by Melba.

The treatment of this opera by The Argus reflected strongly the opinion of all the Australian music critics of the day, that along with the previously given bel canto works—Lucia di Lammermoor, The Barber of Seville, La sonnambula—could at best be regarded as museum pieces, disconnected from current tastes. They could not foresee the revival of interest in them by later artists, led by Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland.

Nevertheless, The Argus critic fully appreciated the vocal skills of Dal Monte, Borgioli, Granforte and Azzolini. Toti was ‘delightful … as flippant a little flirt as ever induced an aged bachelor to demonstrate that there is no fool like an old fool.’ As Pasquale, Azzolini ‘proved to have reserved the best of his capital comedy studies till last.’

The Melbourne season at His Majesty’s finished on Thursday 19 June. They had given eight performances a week for eleven and a half weeks, eighty-six in all, including sixteen operas, seventeen if one counts both works in the double bill. The oldest opera was The Barber of Seville from 1816 and the newest Madama Butterfly from 1904, although that was already twenty years old.

As reported by the Australian Musical News, total audiences at His Majesty’s numbered 211,200 with nearly every performance sold out. And the critics had been generally highly supportive. How would the company do next – in Sydney?

To be continued

Note on Spencer Shier

Many of the photographs included here were taken by the Melbourne-based portraitist Spencer Shier. He was born in 1884 and died at his home at Toorak in 1946. At his studio in Collins Street, he specialised in sittings with politicians, actors, singers, dancers and other society figures. During the Melba-Williamson Company’s season in Australia in 1924, he appears to have had special access to the artists and the productions. He also took movie film of Nellie Melba at home at Coombe Cottage in 1927. A portrait of Melba by Shier is on permanent display in her ‘artistic home’, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Endnotes

1. Melba sang Act 3 of The Marriage of Figaro just once – at La Monnaie in 1921; and she sang Aida at Covent Garden in 1892 abandoning the role a few years later; she famously attempted Brünnhilde in Siegfried at the Met in 1896, but only once

2. Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 230

3. Variously said to be from Milan and Ireland, Miss Onelli was presumably born Henrietta O’Neill

4. Melba’s Australian contemporary, Frances Saville, sang all three soprano roles in a production of The Tales of Hoffmann with Mahler’s Court Opera in Vienna in 1901

5. Catherine Hayes gave a truncated version of Don Pasquale in Melbourne and Sydney in 1854