From diva rivalries to indecent acts in toilets, a new recording project looks at those who rose and those who fell.

Three thousand people were on the quayside when the Bengal sailed from Port Melbourne with 142 passengers on March 11, 1886. A sunny day, there was “an endless mass of parasols and pocket handkerchiefs.” Among the travellers was a young singer, billed in concerts in her native Victoria as ‘Mrs Armstrong’, as yet little known to the general public, who was travelling to London together with her husband Charlie Armstrong, her two-year-old son George and father David Mitchell. Before the Bengal reached the heads of Port Melbourne, an ad hoc onboard choir had been formed and Mrs Armstrong conducted. Could she have imagined that, within a few years, she was to become prima donna assoluta, the most famous singer in the world, Dame Nellie Melba?

She wasn’t alone. Scenes like this were re-enacted hundreds of times across Australasia as ambitious young Australian and New Zealand musicians and singers left home in search of tuition, experience, fame and fortune in the great artistic centres of Paris and London.

The Marchesi effect

For women from Australia...