Festival director Luke Wagner and Marjorie Woollands, the driving force behind the Melba Festival, are planning for a spectacular weekend.By Kath Gannaway
ON AND along the Melba highway the bursting-at-the-seams Melba Festival will pay tribute this weekend to the magic that made Dame Nellie Melba Australia’s first international star.
The Yarra Glen Chamber of Commerce has arranged a program of events to engage local people and visitors in a celebration of music, art, food, wine, heritage and community.
The festival begins at TarraWarra Museum of Art, which will host the launch on Friday evening. In addition, Nightingale, a Melba exhibition created exclusively for the festival, will be on show there over the weekend.
Saturday’s activities start in Yarra Glen township with the YesterYear Street Breakfast and continues until 1pm with street art, roving performers, displays, vintage fire engines and much more.
Tickets are still available for outstanding music and theatre performances. Choose from French sonatas to chamber music, Shakespeare to Mozart and Tchaikovsky, Dvorak to Gershwin, musical theatre to jazz, and, of course, the arias, art songs and ballads that Melba made her own at home and abroad. Add hot-air balloons lighting up the night sky and the inaugural $40,000 Melba Plate at the Yarra Valley Racing Centre, the poetry of C.J. Dennis and photography at Toolangi, magnificent wines along the Melba Wine Trail and pioneer heritage at Gulf Station … and you have a festival which promises to be both exhausting and exhilarating.
The Melba Festival runs from Friday evening, 23 March to Sunday 25 March. For information visit www.melbafestival.com.au or phone Marjorie Woollands on 5965 2559.
