MADAME MELBA BEFORE HER DÉBUT, 1887. From a Photo. by Chalot, Paris.
"Perhaps they did—I do not know," says Madame Melba, dreamily. "But one thing I know for certain—that their daughter did not cherish any such aspirations for a long time to come. I went quietly on with my education—no, not my musical education, that came later—until my marriage, which took place at the early age of seventeen. Stop, though! I was entirely forgetting to tell you the story of what I call 'my first appearance on any stage.' It took place at the Town Hall, Richmond, which is a suburb of Melbourne, and I was aged six at the time! What did I sing? Let me see, now! Yes, I sang 'Shells of the Ocean' first, followed by 'Comin' thro' the Rye.' It was a great occasion, as you may imagine, and I am by no means certain that I am not prouder of it than of anything I have done since."
On the question as to whence—if traceable at all—Madame Melba derives her voice and natural musical gifts, she told me that her mother was an accomplished musician. In addition to being a beautiful pianist, she played also the organ and the harp. Thus it was that the future prima donna was reared so to speak in the lap of Music. Her mother was her first teacher of the piano, and afterwards her studies were aided by the exertions of her aunts Alice and Lizzie.
"Even as a child of three or four," she continued, "I was so passionately devoted to music that I remember frequently crawling under the piano and remaining quiet there for hours while listening to my mother's playing. Yes, my mother sang also, though she had not a particularly notable voice. But her sister, my 'Aunt Lizzie,' as I called her, possessed a soprano voice of extraordinary beauty and quality. To this day I can remember my aunt's absolute control of her voice, and the beauty and ease of her execution even in the highest pianissimo passages. Indeed, I feel sure my Aunt Lizzie would have enjoyed a brilliant career as a public singer, had she adopted it."
It should be mentioned that the diva's father, Mr. David Mitchell, is a squatter resident in the Colony of Victoria, and that his several stations are far removed from important townships. The family now reside at Colbin Abbin Estate; but in the days when Melba was a child they lived at "Steel's Flat," another of her father's estates, where she was born and brought up, with intermittent visits to Melbourne.
I was interested to find that the subject of this interview can also trace the gift of music on the paternal side of the house. To this day her father sings in the local choir, and his daughter told me she well remembered his voice as a deep basso of beautiful timbre. He has always been passionately fond of music, and is, in addition to his vocal talent (to quote his daughter's own expression), "a fiddler of no mean ability." Madame Melba speaks in the most affectionate terms of both her parents. Her mother died while the great singer was in her teens, but Melba cherishes many sweet recollections of her.
"She was a natural artist—not as regards music only, for one remembers it in the general expression of her life. She was, among other things, a charming painter on china, and the dessert-service still in use at home was decorated by her brush.
"Did my father also foster my love of music? Yes, indeed he did, to the utmost of his power. When I was quite a baby it was my great joy, on Sunday afternoons, to sit on my father's knee at the harmonium. He would blow the bellows with his feet, while singing a bass accompaniment to the hymn which I would pick out on the key-board with one finger."
Thus, finding that the Australian singer inherits the gift of song from either side of her family, I inquired whether this passion for music did not begin to take shape at a very tender age.
"In illustration that that was so," she answered, "I remember once our family moving into 'winter quarters' at one of my father's outlying stations. I was ten years old at the time, but I know I felt furious, on arrival, to find that there was no piano in the house. My gentle mother consoled me with the gift of a concertina, which I taught myself to play during the three months that we remained there! In those sequestered places, in the case of country houses very far removed from a church or chapel, it is customary for a clergyman or lay preacher to come along on Sundays and preach to the family, the servants, and station hands—often quite a large congregation, particularly at shearing-time.