Nellie Melba - the greatest diva from Down Under - Telegraph Dame Nellie belongs in their company, and in some respects tops them all. Because she had such a flawless technique she was able to preserve her voice across a long career, which began in the mid-1880s and lasted almost until her death in 1931. She was Australia's first classical music star, and indeed was the single most famous Australian alive for some decades. Dame Edna may feel she has put Melbourne on the map, but Dame Nellie did it first. Living in a far-flung corner of the Empire was hardly a good starting place for an operatic career, and the young Helen Porter Mitchell (as she was known before her stardom) made the mistake of marrying Charles Armstrong, a dour sugar-plantation manager, who carried her off to the steamy tropical north of Australia. The experience of being marooned among endless acres of sugar-cane, hundreds of miles from any cultural life, must have been crushing. Fortunately, Helen Armstrong had a fighting spirit, and soon ditched the plantation and the husband (though she didn't finally divorce him until 1900). She took singing lessons in Melbourne, impressed the Governor of Victoria with her voice, and in 1886 took herself off to England, where her efforts to break into the operatic scene were cold-shouldered (the impresario Carl Rosa forgot an appointment with her, surely the biggest mistake he ever made). Nothing daunted, Helen Armstrong went to Paris to study with the renowned teacher Mathilde Marchesi. As soon as she heard Armstrong, she exclaimed to her husband Salvatore, "J'ai trouvé une étoile!" Armed with a new name (a diminutive of Melbourne) and a polished technique, Melba was soon spotted by an impresario who tied her into a 10-year contract - an unwise move, as it meant she had to turn down an offer from La Monnaie opera house in Brussels to play Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto. Then, in a twist of fate too implausible even for an opera libretto, the impresario died just at the right moment. So Nellie Melba made her debut in October 1887, and audiences were thrilled. Shortly afterwards she played the star role in Delibes's opera Lakmé. The composer was in raptures. "In a sort of reverie I heard your ideal voice interpreting my work with superhuman purity," he raved. That note of amazement at the even purity of Melba's voice would be struck again and again. Sir Henry Wood, co-founder of the Proms, accompanied Melba in rehearsals as Desdemona, and recalled that "her notes were like a string of pearls, touching, yet separate, strung on a continuous vocal line of tone that was never marred or distorted." British audiences were cool at first, but were soon won over. In 1892 Bernard Shaw, previously sceptical, was converted. "I find Madame Melba transfigured, awakened," he wrote about her performance in a now forgotten opera called Elaine. In sum, her heart, which before acted only on her circulation, now acted on her singing... from being a merely brilliant singer, she has become a dramatic soprano of whom the best class of work may be expected. By then she had already conquered Russia. During her tour in 1891 she so impressed the gilded youth of St Petersburg that they spread their cloaks on the snow for her to walk on. Tsar Alexander III added to her already large collection of jewellery with the gift of a diamond necklace. She then launched an assault on the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the US as a whole, which she duly conquered. By the late 1890s she was living the sort of gilded life no opera singer of today can match. She would spend the summer season in London and then move to New York for the winter, awash with diamonds and furs, followed by an entourage of secretaries and hangers-on, and living in grand hotels and expensive rented villas. Melba's fame grew, in flamboyant extra-musical ways. She caught the eye of the Duke of Orléans, who pursued her for some years in a way that kept the gossip columns busy. The great chef Escoffier created four dishes named after her, including Peach Melba. "My name has been printed fairly often and I suppose it will figure on menus long after I've gone," wrote Melba. She was right. Poires Mary Garden and Coupe Emma Calve have disappeared, but Melba toast and Peach Melba live on. Opera divas are supposed to be difficult, and Melba certainly was. She despised singers who would never sing minor roles - "I hate the artistic snobbery of it," she said grandly - but the truth is she couldn't bear rivals. She preferred to have a second-rank soprano playing Musetta to her Mimi in La Bohème, and was annoyed when in 1903 at Covent Garden Musetta was played by the very chic and popular Austrian soprano Fritzi Scheff. One evening young Fritzi was just about to soar up to a difficult top B at the end of one of Musetta's arias, when without warning "a clear angelic voice in the wings landed on it with effortless ease, and sang the rest of the phrase with her." The word went round that it was Melba. After the curtain fell the manager appeared to say Fräulein Scheff was now "indisposed," and would not be appearing again that evening. In fact Scheff had thrown a fit of hysterics, and a proper cat-fight was only narrowly averted. This was cruel, but Melba's saving grace was great generosity. She helped younger artists, and was an incredibly energetic teacher at the Melbourne conservatory. Another endearing trait was her common touch. At Melba's farewell concerts in New York in 1907 the audience was practically hysterical, and refused to leave. "Won't you go home?" cried Melba from the stage. "No!" came the reply. So Melba got the stage-hands to push a piano on to the stage and sang an aria to her own accompaniment. A journalist reported that "A young fellow, in an excess of ardour, having no other offering, threw a round empty cardbox box at her feet." Melba wore it as a hat, which drove them all wild again. Will Dame Kiri have that common touch? Gareth Neame, executive producer of Downton Abbey, said her performance went down a storm: "It was the sight of all these tough electricians and grips and all the people you see on a film set with tears in their eyes," he said. It was quite a special day. Even for those who missed the first three series, that's surely worth tuning in for.