John Amadio

John Amadio (15 November 1883 – 4 April 1964) was an Australian flute player, born in New Zealand, who performed with orchestras around the world and made a career as an international soloist and operatic accompanist. "He owed the beginnings of his extraordinary career to a prevailing public taste for operatic soprano arias with florid flute obbligatos."

By 1940, Amadio and Austral had separated and during the war years he mostly performed in London orchestras and for the Armed Forces in support of the war effort. In 1947, he returned to Australia, toured with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, joined the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and then the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra from 1949 and stayed in the country for the rest of his life. From 1959 Amadio lived in Melbourne in semi-retirement to care for an invalid sister, Evelyn Gunderson. He died in Melbourne in 1964 at the age of 80, during a rehearsal (with Hector Crawford conducting) of the overture to Glinka's Rusland and Lyudmila at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Career Amadio's first professional job as principal flute was with J. C. Williamson's Italian Opera Company. There, in 1902 he accompanied the French-American operatic soprano Clementine de Vere Sapio, who presented him with the ruby ring from her finger and a bouquet of flowers after their performance of the "Mad Scene" from Lucia di Lammermoor. Later he was principal flute in Nellie Melba's opera orchestra when she toured Australia in 1911. From 1903 to 1912 he played in the Marshall Hall orchestra, and from 1909 to 1920 taught flute at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. Among his students were the later Australian virtuosi, Victor McMahon, Leslie Barklamb, and John's own nephew Neville Amadio, who was principal flute with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for 50 years.

Flutes Amadio played a number of Radcliff system flutes, including some in different keys. These included a bass flute, a low-pitched flute d'amour in B-flat, and an alto flute in G. thumb Flute played by John Amadio and made by Rudall Carte & Co, 1923.

Musical style John Amadio and his contemporary, John Lemmone capitalised on the taste of their time for florid operatic arias accompanied by flute obbligatos (in the contradictory sense that they were decorative and played ad lib). A reviewer at the time reported: "Schipa is a fine artist and he drew a bigger crowd than did Heifetz, yet Amadio and his flute quite completely overshadowed Schipa during the first half of the program." Solo performances were often of the Mozart D major Flute Concerto (which Mozart had adapted from his own Oboe Concerto) with the outer movements often played "at breakneck speed", sometimes in order to fit on the early disc recordings. However, he also played works by other composers, including Maurice Ravel, Frank Bridge and Cécile Chaminade.