Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari gamarruwa

Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

I greet you in the language of the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways. I pay my respect to their Elders, past, present and future.

It is a delight to welcome you to Government House.

We are privileged to host receptions here for organisations as diverse as cancer research, Lifeline, the Foundation for the Good Samaritan Sisters, and for our State’s first responders, to name a few, as well as for the formal swearings-in of new Governments and Ministers. 

With so many varied guests, we sometimes challenge ourselves to think of a collective noun for our guests. The Government and Ministers are easy, as we think of a Parliament of owls—the wisest of animals—trusting (I should say knowing) that we will be governed wisely. 

Tonight, we have our honoured guests not only from the Royal College of Music in London, but also representatives from conservatoriums from across our State^[1], Victoria^[2], and New Zealand^[3].

So, perhaps a learned hand of music educators?

We also have renowned performers, including Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who spontaneously sang in the New Zealand Parliament on her 80^th Birthday—just as once, in an outdoor concert in Western Australia, a kookaburra spontaneously joined her. So, perhaps an ecstasy of performers?

There are also those whose generosity and hard work supports and indeed enables so much of this to happen—perhaps a pledge or facilitation of benefactors and arts administrators^[4]?

But whatever appellation you might think of, everyone here tonight shares this in common: a love of music and a commitment to supporting the arts.

The Royal College of Music, who are our special guests tonight, was opened in 1883 by the then Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII^[5]—this handsome gentleman here.^[6]

The connection to Royalty continues to this day. Last year, on the anniversary of his Coronation, King Charles became the College’s Patron, and was for 30 years before this its President, succeeding his grandmother, the Queen Mother in 1993.^[7]

The College’s alumni include some of the most important figures in international music, including Australians such as the great Dame Joan Sutherland and the classical guitar virtuoso John Williams^[8].

This legacy of connection between the College and Australia is now further cemented with the creation of the Australian Commonwealth Scholarship, which provides a talented young Australian the extraordinary opportunity to study there,^[9] an institution ranked Global No. 1 for Performing Arts for the third year running in the 2024 QS World University Rankings, along with the inaugural top position for Music^[10]

With us tonight is the scholarship’s founder, Peter Freedman, bringing his legendary exuberance to supporting the arts.^[11]

And the exciting news is that the inaugural recipient the young soprano Ariana Ricci is here too, and will be performing for us shortly

For us at Government House, this is a welcome back to Ariana. 

As an alumna of both the Conservatorium High School and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music^[12], Ariana spent most of her education a stone’s throw from here and has performed in this room several times.^[13]

To take nothing away from her own superlative talent and dedication, her family gene pool bodes for an exciting future. Ariana is granddaughter of the virtuoso violinist Ruggiero Ricci^[14], renowned exponent of Paganini, and both her parents are accomplished pianists and music educators.

Tonight, her mother Natalia—who lectures at the Sydney Conservatorium—will be accompanying Ariana on our Stuart and Sons piano—only the 7^th built by these innovative NSW master piano crafters, a model incorporating 9 additional keys, extending its range in both the treble and bass^[15]. Its cabinet is made of rare, ancient river red gum, its trim of ‘bog’ red gum exhumed from the Oxbow Lake along the Murray River has been carbon-dated to 10,000 years ago.

Tonight, Ariana has prepared a beautiful program of song, all of which could almost have been composed to be performed here.

The first, Donizetti’s ‘Regnava nel silenzio… Quando rapito in estasi’^[16] from Lucia di Lammermoor^[17] is set at twilight, in a beautiful garden like ours, where Lucia, lovesick, waits for her secret love, Edgardo, to arrive.^[18] This evening, however, a little imagination is required, as Lucia sings of a “pallid ray of dull moonlight”^[19] striking the fountain she waits by… the moon won’t rise until midnight tonight,^[20] and our fountain is being relined and currently lies empty.^[21]

The second aria, from the ‘Presentation of the Rose’ scene in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier is set in the lavish Palace of Faninal, but could easily occur here, amongst these ornate gilded decorations and sparkling chandeliers.

And finally, ‘Saper Vorreste’,^[22] sung during the eponymous masked ball in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera.

There have been many Balls—masked or otherwise—in this room, beginning with the first in 1843, held in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday—without, I stress, any foul play afoot, as tragically closes Verdi’s opera.

However, there is a connection to an assassination, or at least an attempted one, in the next room, the Drawing Room, where Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son, was brought to recuperate after being shot by an Irish dissident at a community picnic at Clontarf during a visit to Sydney in 1868.

On that note, I thank you for joining us tonight as we celebrate what all of you do in supporting and performing music, and one of opera’s rising stars, Ms Ariana Ricci.

Enjoy!

[1] South West Music Regional Conservatorium; Central Coast Conservatorium; Hume Conservatorium; Young Regional Conservatorium; Wollongong Conservatorium; Upper Hunter Conservatorium of Music; New England Conservatorium; Gunnedah Regional Conservatorium; Sydney University Conservatorium; Orange Regional Conservatorium; Riverina Conservatorium of Music; Clarence Valley Conservatorium; Macquarie Conservatorium.

[2] Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

[3] New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī (Victoria Uni of Wellington)

[4] For instance, Ms Olivia Ansell, Artistic Director and Christopher Tooher, CEO, Sydney Festival.

[5] ‘History of the RCM’, Royal College of Music London website, available here

[6] Unknown artist, Portrait of King Edward VII (c1930s?), after Sir Samuel Luke Fildes (1902)

[7] ‘His Majesty King Charles III announced as Patron of the Royal College of Music’, Royal College of Music website, 8 May 2024, available here

[8] ‘Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE - In Memoriam’, Australian of the Year website, available here; ‘John Williams’, Royal College of Music website, available here

[9] The college was ranked Global No. 1 for Performing Arts for the third year running in the 2024 QS World University Rankings, along with the inaugural top position for Music, see ‘Study at the Royal College of Music’, Royal College of Music website, available here

[10] ‘Study at the Royal College of Music’, Royal College of Music website, available here

[11] For instance, as Principal Philanthropic Supporter of the Sydney Festival, currently in full swing and dazzling all.

[12] She graduated from the Conservatorium High School in 2019, and the Conservatorium in 2023. Her recent accolades include: in 2020, receiving a Golden Medal in the Voice – Young Artist category of the 2nd Vienna International Music Competition and a Silver Medal in the Voice - Young Artist category of the Manhattan International Music Competition; in 2023, being a finalist and winner of the Audience Prize in the Demant Dreikurs Song Competition; and, in 2024, a finalist in the Sydney Eisteddfod Opera Scholarship (2024), and recipient of the Sherman Lowe Study Prize and the Pasqualina Lipari Prize at the 2024 IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition: ‘Ariana Ricci’, Pinchgut Opera website, available here; 2024 IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition website, available here

[13] At Conservatorium High School Chamber Concerts in 2015, 2018, and 2019.

[14] See, for instance, Anne Inglis, ‘Ruggiero Ricci Obituary’, Guardian online, 7 August 2012, available here

[15] 4 in the bass, 5 in the treble; expanding a standard A0 to C8 88-key piano to an F0 to F8 97-key piano.

[16] Trans: ‘Silence reigned in the dark and deep night… When carried away in ecstasy’

[17] Trans: Lucia of Lammermoor. The libretto for the opera, by Salvadore Cammarano, is loosely based in Sir Walter Scott’s 19819 historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor: ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’, available here

[18] The libretto describes the beginning of the scene thus: “The park. The fountain of the Siren, a spring once sheltered by an imposing edifice showing the typical adornments of Gothic architecture, but now in ruins. It is twilight. Lucia, much agitated, enters with Alisa”: ‘Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti Libretto’, DM’s Opera Site, available here

[19] ‘Regava nel silenzo’, Operas Arias Composers Singers website, available here

[20] The moon will be rising just before midnight: ‘Sydney, New South Wales, Australia — Moonrise, Moonset, and Moon Phases, January 2025,’ Time and Date website, available here

[21] A reference to Lucia seeing the fountain’s water turning red following the disappearance of the apparition she describes to her maid Alisa as having seen there once; see ‘Regava nel silenzo’, Operas Arias Composers Singers website, available here

[22] Translation: ‘You would like to know’