To Sydney ...
The Sydney season of the Melba-Williamson Grand Opera Company opened with La bohème on Saturday 21 June at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Pitt Street, as it had previously in Melbourne, Nellie Melba again taking the role of Mimì. In fact, mostly the first week mimicked the opening days in Melbourne. Saturday’s La bohème was followed on Monday by Lucia di Lammermoor with Toti Dal Monte, on Tuesday by Tosca with Lina Scavizzi. However, in Sydney, in place of Rigoletto on the Thursday (it moved to Friday), there was Samson and Delilah.
Melba herself arrived with her friends in Sydney on the overnight ‘express’ from Melbourne on Wednesday 18 June. ‘With cheeks flushed by the chill air,’ noted the Evening News, ‘Melba was full of operatic enthusiasm. The season in Melbourne had been a brilliant success. She had pretty words to say about all the artists in the company.’
Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1924.
From Opera and Operatic Life in Australia, 1924-1932, PROMPT Scrapbook 15, Vol. 1.
National Library of Australia, Canberra.
However, at the station, there was an altercation with the paparazzi (as they now would be called). Melba immediately put a ban on photography of herself, a scene re-enacted in the early pages of Beverley Nichols’s novel of 1932, Evensong—so he was clearly there with the party—a photographer’s camera being dashed to the ground.1 The story ran in all the New South Wales newspapers, Melba ever alive to a headline possibility.
The principal artists of the company, chorus, orchestral musicians, plus scenery, costumes and so on left Melbourne on the following two days on special trains. On the Friday, an article by Melba appeared in the papers celebrating the work of the unseen members of the company—singling out Tornari the prompter, Zucchi the chorus master, Farinetti the stage director, the stage and lighting hands, dressers etc. It was presumably written by Beverley Nichols.
The season ran for ten and a half weeks until 4 September and all the operas that were given in Melbourne were repeated—except one, La sonnambula. It was planned that the latter would be included, but late-winter illnesses intervened. There was one operatic newcomer, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, of which there was just one performance, an Australian premiere.
As before in Melbourne, Nellie Melba’s opening Mimì at Her Majesty’s in Sydney was a triumph. In the forthcoming season, Melba was to sing the same three roles that she had performed in the southern city—Mimì in La bohème, Marguérite in Faust and Desdemona in Otello. The difference in Sydney was the increased frequency with which she cancelled as a result of ill-health. At sixty-three her health (and particularly her voice) was by no means as robust as it had been the last time she had been in Australia in 1911. The result was that she sang in five Bohèmes in Sydney (compared to nine in Melbourne), three Fausts (compared to six) and just one Otello (compared to five).
Cast on stage during the triumphal scene of the opera Aida with orchestra, Sydney, 8 August 1924.
National Library of Australia, Canberra.
In the Sydney Morning Herald, the doyen of Australia music critics, Gerald Marr Thompson, greeted the opening of the season:
Every first night is a night of great expectations, and there being no overture to the work, to the surprise of all the people who had forgotten Puccini’s omission, the curtain rang up at once upon—a difference! Those students may have been cold and hungry, but they had not had time to tell their rich, dark red floor-covering! Moreover they were all over so much better dressed than when last presented at Her Majesty’s, and what with their youth, good looks and picturesque ‘fixings’, they made their new audience positively gasp! Dino Borgioli as Rodolfo really looked like a poet, all refinement in his sober black; Alfred Maguenat, the handsome one, revelled in a burgundy-coloured velvet jacket, snuff-coloured waistcoat, red and black check trousers strapped under the foot, and thick, long, waved hair, as Marcello the painter. Antonio Laffi, the rowdy fellow of the group, was made up so as to suggest a lively man of less refinement as Schaunard, the musician; but Gustave Huberdeau, as Colline the philosopher, looked quite the elderly scholar and man of learning in a suit of French blue, toned down to the poverty of long use. After several years of absence, these brave young fellows still doing the same things, Marcello at his easel, and Rodolfo grumbling at the cold weather.
All this before the entrance of Mimì, greeted by ‘a short and sudden outburst of clamorous applause.’ Melba ‘proved in wonderful voice, displaying all the magical charm of timbre which makes it unique, a thing apart.’
All went well for Melba until the beginning of July, when she developed a cold, and Bohème was cancelled. She claimed that her medical advisors were the ones to take the decision that she should not sing, but the highly experienced diva would surely have decided that for herself. On this occasion, Bohème was replaced by Carmen with Aga Lahosca and Nino Piccaluga. Melba re-appeared as Mimì with Borgioli as Rodolfo on Monday 7 July and in subsequent performances until the second week of August, when she succumbed again to a cold, cancelling both Bohème and Otello, which were respectively replaced by Aida and Carmen.
Recovered briefly from her cold, Melba gave her first Marguérite in Faust in Sydney on Wednesday, 16 July, greeted effusively by the Sydney Morning Herald, which loved her by-then familiar representation of Marguérite. A commonplace of opera performance of the era was that, while Melba, Borgioli and Maguenat sang in French, Di Lelio as Mephistopheles sang in Italian. Sadly, Melba was unable to sing in Faust on Thursday 4 September, billed as the final performance of the Sydney season and her ‘Farewell’. It was replaced by The Tales of Hoffmann. She had sung her single Sydney performance as Desdemona on Friday 2 August.
Toti Dal Monte wove her bel canto artistry into the heartstrings of Sydney, just as she had done in Melbourne. She repeated all her main Melbourne roles with the exception of Amina in La sonnambula, which was squeezed from the schedule: these were Lucia, Gilda, Rosina, Olympia and Norina.
Of Toti’s Lucia, the Sydney Morning Herald said: ‘The bird-like melody of Signorina Dal Monte’s voice and the extreme power of her acting and characterisation moved the crowded house to unconstrained enthusiasm’; of her Gilda: ‘… revealed to a delighted audience the sweetness, purity and flexibility of her voice, and the daintiness and power of her acting’; of her Rosina: ‘[She] sang and acted with that superb art to which she has accustomed us’; of her Olympia: ‘… sang brilliantly the valse air of the doll and was recalled again and again’; and of her Norina: ‘The audience carried away with them delightful memories, especially of Toti Dal Monte … and her wonderful voice and superb acting.’
In a farewell letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, Dal Monte wrote:
When I leave Sydney, I take with me very happy memories of a beautiful city and a very musical and kind people.
Toti Dal Monte waving farewell to Sydney, 1924.
Fairfax Corporation, National Library of Australia, Canberra.
All the other leading singers were warmly appreciated in Sydney, both by critics and audiences – without many of the reservations noted in Melbourne. The other two established stars, Dino Borgioli and Apollo Granforte, were particularly lauded. Borgioli sang no less than seven leading lyric tenor roles in Sydney—Rodolfo, Edgardo, Count Almaviva, the Duke of Mantua, Faust, Ernesto (in Don Pasquale) and Hoffmann—all of them highly appreciated. And the presence of his Sydney-born wife, Patricia Mort, was an added attraction. He succumbed to the cold/flu for a while between performances in late June, returning as Almaviva.
Meanwhile, Granforte sang six roles in Sydney, including two leading ‘baddies’, Scarpia and Iago, plus Rigoletto, Tonio in Pagliacci, Doctor Malatesta in Don Pasquale and Carlo Gerard in Andrea Chenier. The last had been premiered in 1896 at La Scala in Milan. All were greeted as top-class performances.
Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 16 August 1924, p.12
Of the previously lesser-known principals in Sydney who became favourites:
- Soprano Lina Scavizzi opened in Sydney as a brilliant Tosca, then as Santuzza and as Maddalena in Andrea Chenier. She succumbed to the company’s cold in August, performing a voiceless Antonia in The Tales of Hoffmann, much to the disappointment of the audience. Why was there no understudy, asked the press?
- Mezzo-soprano Aga Lahoska was a successful Carmen, a role which she sang frequently as a result of Melba’s indisposition in Sydney, followed by Amneris in Aida (indisposed for some performances with a cold), and Giulietta in The Tales of Hoffmann. During the Sydney season, Lahoska gave several recitals.
- The major role of the English mezzo, Phyllis Archibald, was Delilah in Samson and Delilah, but she was also a later replacement for Lahoska as Carmen, then as Giulietta and Amneris. There was some speculation in the press as to why she was deployed rather infrequently.
- Dramatic soprano Augusta Concato first appeared in Sydney as Butterfly, but was later highly appreciated as Aida, then as Maddalena in Andrea Chenier.
- Tenor Nino Piccaluga, husband of Augusta Concato, opened in Sydney as Cavaradossi in Tosca, which he followed with Pinkerton, Don José, Rodolfo, Radames, Turiddu and Andrea Chenier. Altogether a thoroughly useful member of the company. He was threatened with appendicitis early in the season but recovered.
- With so much illness in the company, tenor Bettino Capelli was drafted in to take over the role of Cavaradossi in Tosca at the beginning of July. He was knocked down by a car outside Her Majesty’s Theatre but was not hurt badly and took the stage again later as the Duke in Rigoletto. He went on with the company to Adelaide and toured with Amy Castles in 1925.
The rare Australian in a leading role in Sydney was Sydney-born tenor Alfred O’Shea. As in Melbourne, O’Shea replaced Borgioli as the Duke in Rigoletto and Piccaluga as Rodolfo in La bohème. Melbourne-born soprano Stella Power, the ‘Little Melba’, who had sung with the company in that city, did not appear in Sydney.
Augusta Concato as Aida
Alfred O’Shea. Photo by Ruskin Studios, Melbourne.
The Australian Musical News (Sydney), 1 September 1924, p.1
To Adelaide and a Farewell Return to Melbourne
The intention for the Melba-Williamson’s opera season in Adelaide was to restrict it to ten days. In the event, such was the enthusiasm of South Australian audiences, that it was extended to double that number, and with extra matinées packed in for good measure. Since Melba herself was still suffering—her illness by now described as influenza and bronchitis—it was expected that she would not make an appearance in Adelaide, let alone travel there.
The brief season in Adelaide opened at the Theatre Royal on 20 September with Lucia di Lammermoor, Toti Dal Monte and Dino Borgioli starring as Lucia and Edgardo. In the absence of Melba, Toti was feted as the great visiting diva, The Register reporting:
Not even Sarah Bernhardt has received such a triumphant ovation as that accorded the transcendent Toti Dal Monte.
Including matinées, Lucia was followed in the first seven days by Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Tales of Hoffmann, Carmen, Samson and Delilah and Aida—an extraordinarily packed schedule. Recovered, Melba arrived by train from Melbourne on the Wednesday and announced that she would sing Mimì.
In the remainder of the brief season, the company added Rigoletto, The Barber of Seville, Andrea Chenier, Don Pasquale and Cav and Pag, and a fully recovered Melba appeared to a great reception in Bohéme on Saturday 29th, which she repeated the following Thursday.
While many of the company dispersed following the Adelaide season, the cast of La bohème plus chorus and orchestra returned to Melbourne to give a final Farewell performance—starring Melba of course—at His/Her Majesty’s on Monday, 13 October. There were cheers and tears. The performance was mounted to raise funds for limbless soldiers from the war and gave £18,000 for them.
Melba’s final night in La bohème. Photo by Spencer Shier.
The Home (Sydney), October 1924, p.18
Melba and the floral tributes on stage at His Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne, 13 October 1924. Photo by Spencer Shier.
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
It is worth noting that Melba agreed that three of the performances in the season be given pioneering radio broadcasts. Melba had been an early adopter of ‘wireless’, making a live broadcast in June 1920 for Marconi from its studios in Chelmsford, Essex. It was heard as far away as France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland and Persia, and on ships at Malta. And on 17 June 1923 her performance in La bohème with the BNOC was broadcast live from Covent Garden by the BBC.
It was arranged to broadcast live selections from The Barber of Seville (with Toti) and Faust (with Nellie) direct from Her Majesty’s in Sydney on 3 and 4 September (the end of the Sydney season). The announcement caused a rush to buy radios. In the event, Melba was unwell and unable to sing and selections from The Tales of Hoffmann replaced Faust. However, Melba’s ‘Farewell’ from His Majesty’s in Melbourne was successfully broadcast by 3LO from their Braybrook transmitter on Monday, 13 October, preceded by a speech from prime minister Stanley Bruce. The broadcast was heard in all states in Australia. Sadly, in 1924 there was no means of recording the event.
Altogether, the company performed in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide over a season of six and a half months—from 29 March to 13 October—giving eighteen operas. And a Melba-Williamson company returned to Australia a third time in 1928 (when Melba was sixty-seven), this time with a raft of works new to Australia, including Puccini’s Il trittico and Turandot, Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Massenet’s Thaïs.
While there were many new faces of exceptional quality in 1928, there was also the return of Toti Dal Monte and Apollo Granforte.2 By this stage, Melba herself sang in opera rarely. She made her final Farewell to the operatic stage singing the last three acts of La bohème and the ‘Willow Song’ and ‘Ave Maria’ from Otello in Adelaide on 2 October 1928. 3
Melba & Toti Dal Monte, 1924.
Photo by Bain News Service.
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Nellie and Toti
Historically, rival sopranos have not always had good relations over the years. Rather, their dealings have often been marked by jealousy and acrimony. And Nellie Melba herself had a reputation for moving against any whom she thought represented a threat, these including Emma Eames, Frances Alda and Luisa Tetrazzini—at least in the opinion of those ladies.
So how would Toti Dal Monte fare, physically so close to Melba, both through the 1924 tour and in the return to Australia in 1928? On this subject, the waters were muddied substantially by the publication of Beverley Nichols’s novel Evensong in 1932, the year after Melba’s death.
While recognising that the book focused on vocal decline, coupled with selfishness and jealousy, Evensong’s reception in Britain was generally very positive. Junius in The Bystander rated it highly:
Those of his readers who knew Melba will recognise so many of her traits in Irela, the world-famous singer who is the central figure of his story, that Mr Nichols will have to pardon them if they incline to the opinion that but for Melba Irela would not have been created. It is a clever book, the best Mr Nichols has yet written.
Meanwhile, in Australia, Nichols was seen to have perpetrated a gross betrayal. The Herald wrote:
Not a year after her death, this gifted young man, who accepted her bounty so freely sees no inconsistency in publishing a novel which apparently centres around a cruelly ironic portrayal of his late benefactress.
Australian friends and supporters of Melba lined up to castigate the novelist. John Lemmone, one of Melba’s oldest friends, described it as ‘contemptible … quite unpardonable.’ Yet it seems unlikely that any of the earliest complainers had actually seen the book, which arrived from London the following month
More recent writers on Melba have usually said the basis of the novel—Irela/Melba’s inability to deal with her own declining vocal powers and her jealousy in coming to terms with a gifted young rival—was unjustified, and that there is no real evidence that the two divas had anything other than friendly mutual admiration, and that this is evidently the case, because Toti chose to return to Australia with the third Melba-Williamson Company in 1928.
Scene from the stage play Evensong, with Edith Evans (centre) as Irela.
Photo by A. Console. From The Sketch, 13 July 1932.
What no one seems to have considered is that both versions might be correct. In public (and in her dealings with Toti), Melba was meticulously supportive of the Young Pretender. But in private?
Aside from Evensong, there is indeed no evidence in the public domain that Nellie was jealous of Toti. Indeed, after Toti’s first performance in Melbourne as Lucia, Nellie made a great show (and an on-stage speech) saying how much she admired Toti’s performance.
However, the young novelist Beverley Nichols, having only recently met Melba, spent months close up with her in Australia in 1924, for much of the time taking notes of conversations with her concerning her life and work—towards her memoirs, which were in reality fully ghosted by Nichols. Among those notes, there must have been dozens, perhaps hundreds, of personal observations from the diva about many people in her circle—lots of them concerning Toti, and many more concerning her so-called ‘artistic director’, Henry Russell, with whom she became progressively irritated.
To me, so much of the dialogue—between Irela/Melba and her London secretary Pauline (in place of her secretary in Australia, Nichols), and between Irela and her London musical director, Kober (in place of Henry Russell)—has the ring of truth.
Baba/Toti opens (as she did in Melbourne as Lucia, previously a signature bel canto role of Irela/Melba. In the theatre, the audience goes wild with excitement, especially following the Mad Scene:
But this – this overwhelming success was unbearable … Irela was leaning right out of her box, shouting, ‘Brava, brava!’ There had been a slight lull in the applause, but now the famous voice, the little boy’s voice, echoed out, floating like a silver bubble on the surface of the turbulent flood of sound. Baba turned and kissed her hand. Irela kissed her hand in return. Then the applause was more ferocious than ever. ‘The star that was setting paying tribute to the star that was rising,’ people whispered. (p.197)
Irela retreated into her box. So much for the public face.
As Pauline [Nichols] sat down she noticed that Irela was still laughing. Their eyes met. In a sort of frenzied self-defence Irela whispered, “That wig … that wig!” She pointed to Baba. Pauline twisted her mouth into a smile.
Later that evening, Irela listens to one of her own recordings of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. She reminisces about her own debut in the role at the Opéra in Paris, and the applause. And about the students in St Petersburg who pulled her carriage through the snowy streets. And about her love for one man at that time (in Melba’s case Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, the pretender to the French throne).
The critics know I still sing better than anyone in the world. The audiences are sorry I don’t give them so many high notes, but the young ones feel they ought to hear me, just to tell their children they have heard me, and the old ones remember … ah, yes, they remember … and I can still make that memory live again. (p212)
The following day, the ecstatic newspaper reports of Baba’s performance rolled in with their comparisons with the past diva. Irela was enraged: ‘“She hasn’t got a trill. She—has—got—no—trill!” And each word she emphasised by banging her fist on the table … “How dare they talk about her astonishing flexibility? It isn’t her fault that she hasn’t got a trill.”’
Does all this sound authentic? I think so. And luckily we may compare the recordings of the Mad Scene by Melba and Dal Monte, both have breathtaking coloratura singing: the former’s brilliant trill and the latter’s lack of it are both there for all to hear.4
Evensong is so clear that the public Irela/Melba is quite different from the private one. It’s a common phenomenon, neatly captured in Beverley Nichols’s later memoir, entitled Are They the Same at Home? In the case of Melba, it’s quite apparent from Evensong that she was not.5
Endnotes
1. Nichols, Evensong, pp.27-30
2. Toti returned to Australia (and this time also New Zealand) for a concert tour (between the 1924 and 1928 opera seasons) in 1926
3. A concert party derived from the opera company toured Australia and New Zealand followed the Melbourne Farewell of 13 October 1924; the participants were: Nino Piccaluga, Augusta Concato, Phyllis Archibald and Apollo Granforte; following his return in 1928, Granforte also returned to Australia with the J.C. Williamson’s Italian Company in 1932 (see film link to Granforte’s Figaro aria in 1932 in Australia)
4. In Nichols’s Evensong, comparing the voices of Irela (Melba) with Baba (Dal Monte), Nellie’s is ‘the voice of a spirit’, whereas Toti’s is ‘the voice of a very agile little bird’
5. From February 1932 Evensong was serialised in Australian Women’s Weekly; in June 1932 Evensong was successfully presented as a play (adapted by Nichols and Edward Knoblock) at the Queen’s Theatre in London with Edith Evans in the lead role; in August 1933 it was staged by an amateur group at the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne; in 1934 there was a film version with Evelyn Laye.
Acknowledgments
With special thanks to Rob Morrison for his work on the sourcing of illustrations and other information; and as always to Elisabeth Kumm; also to Tony Locantro and Greg Ralph.
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