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."

Amadio was born in Christchurch, New Zealand to Samuel Biddle Taylor and Eliza Taylor, and was given the birth name John Bell Taylor. When the boy was one year old, his father died and Eliza took the family to Wellington where, in 1890 at the age of 39, she married a 22-year-old carpenter and amateur flute player, Henry Antonio Amadio. John assumed his stepfather's surname and began learning the flute, showing early promise. He performed with the Wellington Orchestral Society at the age of 11 and again at age 12 as a soloist in a flute concerto, with Alfred Hill conducting.

In 1900 the family moved to Sydney, Australia, and then to Melbourne, where in 1901 the young Amadio gained his first position as a professional flute player. Amadio married a pianist, Leonora Soames Roberts, in 1916; but they separated in 1918 and divorced in 1925. Shortly after, he married the Australian operatic soprano, Florence Austral.

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, a few moments after finishing a performance (with Hector Crawford conducting) of Mozart's D major flute concerto at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

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