Can anyone tell me about Dame Nellie Melba?
World renowned soprano. In her lifetime, Dame Nellie Melba achieved international recognition as a soprano and enjoyed an unrivalled ‘super-star’ status within Australia. Nellie Melba was born Helen Porter Mitchell on 19 May 1861 at Richmond, Melbourne. Her Scottish father, David Mitchell, was a building contractor and a good bass vocalist, and her mother, Isabella (nee Dow) was her first music teacher. She was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Melbourne and received her early singing tuition from Ellen Christian and the Italian tenor, Pietro Cecchi, who is credited with urging her to make singing her vocation. After the death of her mother in 1881, followed by that of her youngest sister, Nellie accompanied her father to Mackay in Queensland, where he purchased a sugar mill. She married Charles Armstrong in Brisbane in 1882 and they had a son, George, the following year. The marriage was to end in divorce in 1900. Returning to Melbourne in 1884, Nellie decided to become a
