During this farewell tour of Melba’s [Nellie Melba], one of the arias she sang – which was included in every programme – was ‘L’amerò, sarò constante’ from Mozart’s Il Re Pastore, for soprano and violin. (I adapted the violin obbligato for viola.) Her singing of this was divine: no more beautiful phrasing could be imagined. Melba, that great artist, was also a generous and delightful woman. / Her singing was unique. She seems to have received as a natural gift what others strive for with toil and tears and never quite attain. She sang with a perfectly lovely and perfectly even scale, and the effect was of simplicity and ease. I believe, as a matter of fact, she did not have to work much in her training-time. Her intonation was always faultless. No singer I have ever heard could trill as she did; the two notes of her trill were dead in tune, and the utmost brilliancy was maintained for its duration. The Re Pastore aria included an elaborate cadenza with florid decorations and a chromatic scale rising an octave to the B flat above the treble stave, with the viola accompanying chromatically a third below. Her singing of this scale was always a miracle of exactitude. All her life writers strove to describe the quality of her tone, but this was beyond words. It would, at the same time, be a lack of candour not to admit that Melba condescended at times to sing music unworthy of her voice and art. << less