 After making her operatic debut in Oxford in 1934, in Rameau's "Castor et Pollux" Labbette took the role of Mimì in "La bohème" at Covent Garden in 1935, using the mock-Italian name "Lisa Perli", after her birthplace, Purley.The press and public were not long deceived by the pseudonym, and she was rapidly accepted as an opera singer.When the hoax was revealed, "The Gramophone" published a short verse which included the lines