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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent portrait of a fascinating opera star
Review: Before Hetherington's exhaustive study of the legendary opera star, Nellie Melba, the available resources ranged from exaggerated to false. Not that Dame Nellie helped matters much; besides being a legendary singer, she had the marketing instincts of Martha Stewart and succeeded in creating quite a bit of self-myth that appeared and reappeared in newspapers, magazines and biographies. The 1909 biography by her secretary Agnes Murphy, a ghost-written autobiography by Beverly Nichols and a biography by Percy Colson, which appeared in 1932, a year after Melba's death, could all be described as "Melba's life the way she'd like us to remember it." Also in 1932, Nichols published "Evensong", a novel whose unpleasant, selfish and domineering central character is obviously intended to be Melba. Within a year "Evensong" appeared as a play and a film. A willing public accepted Nichols's fiction as fact. MGM's film, "Melba", and a 1961 centenary biography by Joseph Wechberg did nothing to dispel the well-entrenched myth. Hetheringon succeeds in cutting away this accumulated legend to paint a balanced portrait of the complex Nellie Melba, a study well-grounded in solid research and primary sources. In clear and very readable prose, he presents a woman with a superior vocal talent and intense ambition, a stubborn woman dedicated to hard work and convinced that if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. That Hetherington has a detailed knowledge of his subject is obvious. Occasionally he seems overly critical, though that may be an attempt to remain impartial. The book contains numerous photos of Melba, some posed and in costume, and a few candid, the latter scarce as Melba rarely allowed candid photos of herself. For anyone who would like a detailed portrait of this remarkable Australian, this is an excellent place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent portrait of a fascinating opera star
Review: Before Hetherington's exhaustive study of the legendary opera star, Nellie Melba, the available resources ranged from exaggerated to false. Not that Dame Nellie helped matters much; besides being a legendary singer, she had the marketing instincts of Martha Stewart and succeeded in creating quite a bit of self-myth that appeared and reappeared in newspapers, magazines and biographies. The 1909 biography by her secretary Agnes Murphy, a ghost-written autobiography by Beverly Nichols and a biography by Percy Colson, which appeared in 1932, a year after Melba's death, could all be described as "Melba's life the way she'd like us to remember it." Also in 1932, Nichols published "Evensong", a novel whose unpleasant, selfish and domineering central character is obviously intended to be Melba. Within a year "Evensong" appeared as a play and a film. A willing public accepted Nichols's fiction as fact. MGM's film, "Melba", and a 1961 centenary biography by Joseph Wechberg did nothing to dispel the well-entrenched myth. Hetheringon succeeds in cutting away this accumulated legend to paint a balanced portrait of the complex Nellie Melba, a study well-grounded in solid research and primary sources. In clear and very readable prose, he presents a woman with a superior vocal talent and intense ambition, a stubborn woman dedicated to hard work and convinced that if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. That Hetherington has a detailed knowledge of his subject is obvious. Occasionally he seems overly critical, though that may be an attempt to remain impartial. The book contains numerous photos of Melba, some posed and in costume, and a few candid, the latter scarce as Melba rarely allowed candid photos of herself. For anyone who would like a detailed portrait of this remarkable Australian, this is an excellent place to start.
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