Silk and satin theatre programmes were frequently produced in the 18th and 19th centuries to commemorate special theatrical and musical events, the less expensive ones with integral fringing made from fraying cut edges, and the more expensive with separately applied silk or metallic fringes. This programme was produced for a concert at Melbourne Town Hall on Saturday 27th September 1902 produced by George Musgrove (1854-1916), the British-born theatrical producer who emigrated to Australia with his parents when he was nine.

This concert starred the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba (1861-1931) singing Lucia's aria Il Dolce Suono from the Act lll mad scene of Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor, two songs, and Violetta's Act l aria Ah fors e lui from Verdi's La Traviata. A year later Musgrove presented Madame Melba on her first tour of Australia and New Zealand. Although she was born in Melbourne, from which she took her stage name, she had established her career in Europe and America, and this appearance in 1902 marked her triumphant return to Australia managed by Musgrove.

The account in Punch, 2 October 1902 noted: 'The scene in the Town Hall on Saturday night was of the sort that we style heroic and historic .... It was the first triumph on her own country and among her own people of a great singer - of a picturesque and popular personage. Madame Melba, who had left us in humility, had come back victoriously as one of the world's celebrities, arrayed in the shining raiment that her genius wove'.