Michael Shmith

Product placement, admittedly not a term in vogue in Madame Melba’s time (1861-1931), was lucratively and occasionally indiscriminately deployed in her name. Since that name was itself an invention (one decided upon in late 1886, by Mrs Armstrong, née Mitchell, at the behest of her teacher, Madame Marchesi), it was officially or blatantly unofficially applied to everything from throat lozenges and mouthwash to cigarettes, motorcycles, and a sewing machine. Then, of course, there are Escoffier’s tasty tributes: Pêches Melba and Melba Toast – and let’s not forget that small town in Idaho, Melba (pop. 600). This was named not directly after Nellie, but a Melba once removed: the daughter of the man who founded the town in 1912. At the time, Melba was as fashionable a name for newborn girls in the United States as it was in Britain.

My first experience of Carlo Felice Cillario was in March 1969, when he conducted the Elizabethan Trust Opera’s production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne. I had never seen the opera; nor had I heard of its conductor, whose triple-barrelled name was more indicative of a musical marking than something that belonged to an active musician. ‘Active’ was certainly the word: Cillario rushed into the pit and, afterwards, practically danced on to the stage, baton still in hand, to rapturous applause. In between, the actual performance was the first time I really connected to the compelling vivacity and innate drama of live opera. It helped immeasurably that the cast included the great Australian tenor Donald Smith as King Gustavus III. That night, all of it, still resounds in my mind.

This attractive and fascinating volume is billed as ‘the first illustrated book on the 1948 Old Vic tour’, and, sure enough, it is jammed from stage-left to stage-right with scores of images – especially of the eternally photogenic two superstars who led the tour. Not among them is one particular photograph – more of a snapshot, really, just 6 x 4½ inches in 1948 measurements. It was taken on the night of 17 May 1948 at a post-performance party at a family home in Melbourne’s St Kilda. Four of the seven people in shot are unidentified; but two of the others, unmistakably, are Vivien Leigh and her husband, Laurence Olivier: she is in a fur coat, sitting in an armchair, a plate of food balanced on her lap; he is two along, perched on a piano stool. But who is that man in the middle in half profile? None other than Chico Marx, who was also in Melbourne, with his own show at the Tivoli.

That doctors aren’t supposed to become incurably ill is something their patients might say, and about as useless as declaring that dentists are forbidden from contracting toothache or that undertakers should live forever – seeing other people out, not themselves.

Melvyn Bragg has been a British cultural polymath since he more or less drifted into arts broadcasting after coming down from Oxford more than six decades ago. His own longevity (he is now eighty-three) is reflected in his two most enduring series. The first is In Our Time, a BBC Radio 4 discussion series and podcast that has been running for a quarter of a century. The second was The South Bank Show, whose more than 700 episodes were screened on the ITV television network from 1978 to 2010; from 2012 it has been running on Sky Arts. Bragg, as its editor and presenter, profiled many cultural giants: from Paul McCartney and Laurence Olivier to Marlene Dietrich and Dusty Springfield.