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The Australian
Opera Auditions Committee
and
Sheila Prior
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The
Australian Opera Auditions Committee
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A completely voluntary organisation,
the AOAC has raised over $1,600,000 in the last 34 years, to support
opera in Australia.
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The Australian Opera Auditions
Committee was the first to honour Dame Joan Sutherland by establishing a
scholarship in her name. For more than 30 years the Dame Joan
Sutherland/AOAC Scholarship (now $20,000) has been awarded annually.
Among the many recipients of this scholarship are Anthony Warlow, Daniel
Sumegi, John Antoniou, Maria Pollicina, Gregory Tomlinson, Dominic
Natoli, James Hancock, Richard Alexander, Dwayne Jones, Deborah Humble,
Brad Cooper, Andrew Goodwin, Emma Jayakumar and Simon Thew.
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It has been the Committee’s pleasure
and privilege to host a Celebrity Luncheon or Dinner in honour of both
Dame Joan and Richard Bonynge each year since 1977. This has been one of
the many joyful and gracious ways of raising much needed funds to enable
the Committee to continue supporting our talented singers.
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Young singers who have been and are
members of Opera Australia’s (now the Moffatt Oxenbould) Young Artists
Development Programme, have benefited for more than 32 years, from the
annual AOAC Sponsorship (now $20,000; including the Nina Barden
Scholarship).
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Recognising that established artists
also need assistance at various times in their careers, we give many
‘Sheila Prior Memorial Grants’ to singers, conductors,
instrumentalists and international teachers and vocal coaches to work
with our performers in Australia.
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The AOAC has sponsored three CDs;
‘Lisa Gasteen-Singer of the World’ and Horst Hoffmann's ‘Great
Opera Heroes’, in the Voice of Australia series for
Walsingham Classics and for Melba Records, ‘The Power of Love’,
Deborah Riedel with Richard Bonynge conducting the Australian Opera and
Ballet Orchestra.
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- Donations over $2 to the A.O.A.
Committee are tax deductible.
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- Sheila Prior AM BEM DLJ, 1914 - 2004
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- With the passing of
Sheila Mary Prior it is widely believed that a silver era when many
Australian women dedicated their lives to working in an honorary
capacity for the arts, ended. For over 60 years she dedicated her
energies to fund raising activities.
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Sheila Gleeson was born in Sydney 6th May 1914, the youngest
of three children. She attended the Monte Sant’ Angelo Convent and has
stated that she “had a wonderful time growing up… going to GPS balls
(always with someone different), tennis parties (she was an outstanding
tennis player) and the shows”.
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was brought up on the recordings of the likes of Enrico Caruso, Dame
Nellie Melba, Amelita Gallicurci, Dame Clara Butt, Tito Schipa and
Beniamino Gigli and was aware even at the age of nine that singers in
the flesh did not match those recordings.
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- She married an engineer,
Lance Prior (deceased) and is survived by her only child Peter. Her
husband was typical of the professional men of his generation in his
insistence that he be the sole breadwinner (“He wasn’t going to have a
working wife”). So it was that after her marriage her interest in arts
fund-raising and community work began.
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- Trained as an accountant,
she relished the challenge of making all fund-raising functions a
financial as well as an artistic success. Her two great loves in music
were the piano and the singing voice.
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- In June 1978 Sheila was
awarded a British Empire Medal and in the 1985 Queen’s Birthday Honours
an AM (Member of the Order of Australia) for her “services to the
community”. These services
included; Chairman, Australian Opera Auditions Committee (since 1972);
Vice-President, Sydney Opera House Appeal Fund Ladies Committee;
Chairman, Functions for the Chancellor's Committee of the University of
Sydney; executive positions on many fund raising committees including
those to aid the Civilian Maimed and Limbless Association; the
Elizabethan Ladies Committee; Meals on Wheels (a Swifts Committee of the
Catholic parish then at Darling Point); Musical Students Overseas Study
Foundation; Children’s Medical Research Foundation and the Royal
Alexandra Hospital for Children.
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Sheila was foundation Treasurer of the
Friends of the Sydney International Piano Competition and in April 2003
was unanimously elected Vice President. For over 25 years she handled
all of the membership registrations and ticketing for Friends Events. In
addition, she has been the person to whom so many of the Friends and the
general public have telephoned for information not only about the
Friends but also about the Competition itself. Sheila’s patience in
attending to the numerous enquiries has been greatly appreciated. She
has done this in addition to the huge amount of work involved in
book-keeping, preparation of financial statements for each Council and
Annual Meeting.
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As founding President and Chairman
since 1972 of the Australian Opera Auditions Committee, Sheila has
overseen the raising of more than 1.8 million dollars over 32 years
which has been used to support talented Australian singers, conductors
and instrumentalists. The AOAC was the first committee to Honour Dame
Joan Sutherland by establishing a scholarship in her name ($20,000
annually) which has been awarded over the last 27 years.
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Sheila has been a long standing member
of the Town Hall Committee of the City of Sydney Council and the
Military and Hospitallier Order of St Lazarus, a body formed by the
Knights at the time of the Crusades. This order also raises money to
support a variety of charities. Sheila was inducted as a Dame in the
Order in 1993.
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Sheila Prior was a woman of an
enormously generous nature, always ready to help a friend in need, a
woman with an amazing memory for names that made her the perfect hostess
and greeter at the many functions that she organized, a woman whose
integrity and honesty was beyond question and a woman who would never
take the credit for her achievements... always “it’s the committee that
did it”.
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