Pic by by Henry Walter Barnett
Dame Nellie Melba was born Helen Porter Mitchell in 1859. She studied in Paris and made her debut in Brussels in 1887. She regularly performed at Covent Garden in London (1888-1926), as well as New York, Australia and many other places in the world and was Australia’s first classical singer to receive international fame. She died in Sydney of septicaemia in 1931 at 69.