The diva famously took an age to quit the stage, but one concert can lay as much claim as any to being her final farewell.

More farewells than Dame Nellie Melba is a familiar catchphrase among Australians, but one Melba farewell outweighed all the others. It happened on the evening of June 8, 1926: Melba’s last performance at her ‘artistic home’ – the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London.

While that evening was an event in itself, the auditorium packed with the great and the good including King George V and Queen Mary, it is also memorable for a different reason. Parts of it were captured live, as it happened, by The Gramophone Company, one of the earliest recordings of an important occasion using newly-invented microphones and recorded onto 78rpm discs lasting around four minutes each. Released from what she regarded as the stultifying atmosphere of the studio, although 65 years old (and still performing teenage roles), Melba was on top form, vocally and dramatically.

Dame Nellie MelbaDame Nellie in La Bohème with the Melba-Williamson Grand Opera Company, 1924

It was the diva herself who decided on the programme for...