Alfredo Malabello, many thanks for taking time out to see me. You are a fascinating and impressive man with many strings to your bow and balls in the air. You have built a name for yourself as a musician/pianist, singer and all-round entertainer ̶ with a “voice of romance”. An icon in the Australian music industry, you feature heavily in the media and have been called “Australia’s very own Italian son of song”

Ron Howard, the acclaimed director of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018), “The Da Vinci Code” (2006), “A Beautiful Mind” (2005), “Apollo 13” (1995) and many others successful movies is back to the music documentary. Now, with “Pavarotti”, the director has pushed himself in a different, unexplored world: that of Opera.

Italy has again become a country of emigrants. Today, a large number are highly educated people who take their talent abroad in search of better career opportunities and professional benefits. Thirty thousand Italian researchers leave each year, while only three thousand qualified scientists migrate to Italy. In recent years, the media, policymakers and scholars have used the term ‘brain drain’ to describe this phenomenon.

It is a bright early July day. On a dusty mountain track fringed by fir trees and leading to a pass in the French Alps 2,600 metres above sea level, two men are struggling, pushing, panting. Their sweat has dried on their faces etching masks of effort and pain. These men are road race cyclists and the scene is the Tour de France of 1952.

I would like to acknowledge the Jadawadjali and the Wotjobaluk peoples as Traditional Owners of the Wimmera region, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present, and the Elders from other communities of Victoria.

For those who grew up hearing the iconic song for Coppa Del Nonno’s commercial,“Joy, I feel good, I feel fine”, Gisella Cozzo’s voice might already be endeared to those childhood memories and fondness for ice cream.