Nellie Melba, best known now because she gave her name to a dry toast and a rich dessert, is remembered by opera-going veterans as the most flamboyant lyric coloratura soprano of the generation before World War 1. She was a natural subject for a movie biography, but the problem was to find someone who could look and act the part and also approximate the prodigious clarity and timbre of Melba's voice.
The problem has been solved in a film starring Patrice Munsel. As the australian Nellie Mitchell - changed to Melba after the city of Melbourne - she acts her way through some semifictious romances, sings through a dozen numbers ranging from the Mad Scene in Lucia to Comin' Thro' the Rye, and proves (image above) that she can fit with ease into the most ornate late-victorian costume and background.
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