watercolourist, wood-engraver, printer and publisher, was the eldest of the three sons of Antonio Azzopardi, a Maltese seaman who came to Melbourne in 1839, worked as a mail contractor then a canvasser for the Melbourne Herald , and married a Scot, Margaret Sandeman. All three sons were said to speak excellent vernacular Scottish all their lives. Antonio purchased R.M. Abbott’s printing works, near the Herald 's job-printing office, and Angelo and one of his brothers became printers. Angelo was also a wood-engraver and a painter in watercolours. He exhibited View of Cairo and View of Jerusalem in the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
Azzopardi set up independently as a printer in the 1870s. For a time he was in partnership with Oliver Levey, a subsequent owner of the Herald , while two versions of the libretto for Garnet Walch’s pantomime Australia Felix were printed by Azzopardi, Hildreth & Co. of Melbourne in 1873 (LT and ML). Azzopardi’s subsequent Eureka Electrotype and Stereotype Foundry was at 17 19 Latrobe Street, Melbourne. The official record of the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition noted that the steam machinery exhibited from the foundry of Angelo Azzopardi, 'artist-engraver and silver medallist’, was of a 'superior style’. It offered the possibility of longer runs, larger circulation and cheaper production costs for illustrated magazines.
Like his father, Angelo Azzopardi married a Scot. Their children included Valetta, the second son, who was employed in the stamp-printing branch of the Melbourne Post Office for many years. Angelo died at Brunswick on 18 January 1896, aged 49.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
