Melinda Hughes  studied with Mya Besselink and graduated with Honours from The Maastricht Conservatory of Music, The Netherlands then as a postgraduate from the Royal College of Music in London.

For two years she toured Europe as a soloist with the André Rieu Strauss Orchestra performing Operetta favorites, often for TV and Radio.

Opera roles performed include Cio Cio San in Madame Butterfly (Diva Opera, Opera project: London City Opera and Columbia Artists, USA), Fiordilgi (Opera Interludes), Mimi (Diva Opera, New London Opera), Violetta (Central Festival Opera, European Chamber Opera), Gilda, Frasquita (European Chamber Opera), Konstanze (BYO, Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Donna Anna (Pavilion), Nedda (Stichting Pagliacci & Kentish Opera), Ninette in L’Amour pour Trois Oranges (Brussels Opera Studio), Pamina (Chateau La Hulpe Festival, Brussels), Lisa in La Sonnambula, The Netherlands), Euridice (at Teatro Córdoba, Spain, conducted by Leo Brouwer) and Frau Fluth in Merry Wives of Windsor (The Netherlands).

Concerts include Marzelline in Beethoven’s Leonore with Chelsea Opera group (The Queen Elizabeth Hall, London), Mendelssohn’s Mid Summer Night’s Dream (Auditorio Nacional, Madrid, conducted by Leo Brouwer), Haydn’s Creation, Mozart’s Mass in C minor, Britten’s War Requiem (Norwich Cathedral), a gala at St John’s Smith Square, "The Three Sopranos" opening the 1998 World cycling Championship in Holland, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Händel’s Messiah both performed in Córdoba, Spain.

Melinda's engagements have taken her to the South East Asia, The Middle East and Europe singing in prestigious venues such as The British Embassy in Paris, Sandringham, The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, The Philharmonic Concert Hall in Cologne, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, ICC in Berlin, Teatro Romano, Fiesole, Italy, The Mesquita in Córdoba,and The Auditorio Nacional in Madrid Spain to name but a few.

Melinda wrote and produced “From Love to Decay”, which premiered at the Jermyn Street Theatre in February 2002. She sang at The 2004 Cheltenham Music festival as part of a farewell cabaret for Michael Berkely, the former Artistic Director, at the Pittville Pump Room and has performed her own cabaret at Pizza on the park , London and The Waldorf Astoria, New York.

In 2007 Melinda sang a Proms concert with The City of London Sinfonia in Hamburg and started her own cabaret company called Kiss & Tell Productions which specializes in musical social satire.