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“Why should I not sing for a thousand years?” said Dame Nellie Melba, whom Massenet once called “the Stradivarius of the human voice”.
Melba was the most famous Australian woman of her time, a reigning diva in London, New York, Chicago and Europe for forty years. Her name is synonymous with music performance of unrivalled excellence. Melba’s voice lives on in the spirit of the recording industry. It was the art of Melba, and Enrico Caruso that created that classical record industry. Coming to sing for the microphone in the earliest days of a new and much mistrusted invention they turned the gramophone record into a serious and universal medium for carrying great music around the world.
Today Melba Recordings is a label for voices—and a label for talent and individuality in a world where the homogeneous and the mass-produced can become commonplace.
An age of instant digital communication sets new challenges for, and demands new standards from, the record industry. As long as music—the most universal and all-embracing of the arts—goes on being performed, as long as artists devote their lives to its service, there is a need for great recordings which chronicle and promote their achievements.
In this spirit the Melba Foundation was established in 2003, with founding benefactor Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and patrons Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. The role of the Foundation is to help the Nellie Melbas and the Joan Sutherlands of today to develop a profile and continue building their careers on the international music platform. The Melba Foundation, and Melba Recordings, live by Dame Nellie’s credo: “If I’d have been a housemaid, I would have been the best in Australia—I couldn’t help it. It’s got to be perfection for me”. The Melba Foundation is a charitable trust that was founded specifically to promote Australia’s finest classical musicians and artists on the international and national markets. In May 2004 the Federal Government announced a grant of $5 million over five years to the Foundation for the production of high-quality music recordings to showcase Australian artists on the world classical music stage.
The Foundation has now embarked on a five-year program that includes the production, distribution and marketing of 35 CD recordings involving many of Australia's most distinguished musicians and emerging artists. The program includes repertoire never previously recorded, which is designed specifically to interest the international market.
The Melba Foundation is taking Australian music culture to the world, creating a legacy for future Australians in recordings designed to stand the test of time. The beneficiaries of this initiative are Australia’s musicians, artists, orchestras and performing arts organisations. |
| The Melba Foundation is supported by the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s Arts Funding Body. |
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