LXII.—MADAME MELBA.
By Percy Cross Standing.
MADAME MELBA AS SHE FIRST APPEARED IN GRAND OPERA.—GILDA IN "RIGOLETTO," BRUSSELS, OCTOBER 15, 1887.
From a Photo. by J. Ganz, Brussels.
To an observant student of the world's genius it is a reflection, not without a peculiar interest of its own, that the Australian Continent has so far produced but one woman-singer of the first rank. Of poets whose genius is as undoubted as their place in the world's literature is certain Australia has given us at least two, in Henry Kendall and the gifted but ill-fated Adam Lindsay Gordon. To the drama this, the "least contiguous" of the four continents, has contributed Haddon Chambers—though the creator of "Captain Swift" and "The Idler" has now dwelt among us so long as to be regarded as a fully naturalized "Englander." The department of imaginative literature is already represented by quite a little army from "down under," as the eminent names of Mrs. Campbell Praed, "Tasma," Mr. Rolf Boldrewood, Miss Ada Cambridge, Miss Ethel Turner, Mr. Guy Boothby, and the late Marcus Clarke bear eloquent testimony; whilst the field of critical and biographical writing finds a worthy representative in Mr. Patchett Martin.
But Melba stands alone. Towering head and shoulders over every other aspirant to the highest honours of grand opera, the retirement of Madame Patti from the operatic field has left "the Australian Nightingale" undisputed ruler of an empire probably the proudest in the sum of this planet's most desirable possessions. Yet these are honours becomingly and graciously worn by one who, scarcely a decade ago, was little more than a name to the patrons and supporters of the opera.
As I sit in her salon to-day, and chat with this queenly woman, whose greatest charm assuredly lies in her consideration for others, I wonder whether she ever recalls that little white-robed girl (herself) who, in far-off Melbourne, in the dead of night, startled her parents and brought them downstairs by her playing of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." It is a pretty story, with a prettier sequel. For the parents of that little girl had not the heart to chide their offspring for her "precocity" (that unmeaning word in which the beginnings of genius are so often concealed), but rather did they coax her back to bed as they marvelled over what they had heard. Surely they must, at that early day, have had some faint glimmering of the future in store for the coming prima donna!
