FAREWELL OF DAME NELLIE MELBA.

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 57, 4 September 1926, Page 15

FAREWELL OF DAME NELLIE MELBA.

This concert was under Messrs. Ibbs and Tillett's management, and although every seat was booked out, they managed to save us one ticket so that we could give our friends overseas an account of this great event. We had been in the Albert Hall be.fore. We remembered the sparse audience which looked as if it had lost itself among the 10,000 seats at the concert'given by the Pasdeloup Orchestrc. from Paris (Opera Comiqne). Well, now there were no empty seats, only a sea of faces, including the Australian cricketers who were in a box given them by the Prince of Wales. Dame Nellie was in splendid voice. It was great singing, and after hearing so much music in America and England, and so many Bingers, good and bad, one had to realise that Melba has given the world the standard for the vocal art. Dressed in white, which blazed iv diamonds, after her first Mozart number, the stage represented a garden of flowors, and these were added to as the concert progressed. One heard cooee's all over the huge hall, and the applause was tremendous and sincere. The orchestra, under Sir Henry Wood, seemed to feeltho emotion, born of the o/;asion, and gave tho great singer a beautifully delicate accompaniment in Mozart's aria "L'Amoro" ("II Re Pastore"). The first encore was from Act 3, "La Boheme," and everyone present, conductor, orchestra, audience, and Dame Nellie herself realised and felt the significance of the words, "Addio senza rancor. Lionel Perti (violin), and John Brownlee (an Australian bariI tone), were the assisting artists, and the whole programme was most enjoyable. By the time we left, the audience had worked itself into a great state of emotion, and we could imagine what the finish would bp. We do not like crowds, especially when they number 10,000, so, as before stated, we were able to board our humble bus with all our members intact, and our hats perched on top of our swollen Australian heads.