Gaulitana Festival

Gaulitana: A Festival of Music is an annual springtime international festival, now established as a major artistic endeavour in Malta. Organized by the Gaulitanus Choir, the festival’s raison d’etre is to create a platform seeking to enrich Gozo’s cultural output in the leaner months of the year. Yearning to contribute towards transforming Gozo into an island of creativity, it runs for around a month and is held in various localities, with the chosen venues varying from opera houses and heritage sites to open-air locations and pub lounges.

The festival includes an eclectic mix of musical events in multifarious styles: whether operatic or symphonic, chamber or sacred, vocal or instrumental, evening or lunchtime, and classical or semi-classical, formal or informal. The multi-dimensionality of Gaulitana extends to non-musical artistic disciplines: live painting, art and literature. A holistic and intensive educational programme devised in collaboration with Education authorities, GAULearn, runs in parallel alongside the festival, which reaches a climax with its concluding OPERA+ Weekend, a cultural bonanza of quality events intrinsically linked with an operatic production.

A recipient of the Gozo Cultural Support Programme (issued by Arts Council Malta and the Ministry for Gozo) and the EFFE label, it prides itself with several collaborations with local and foreign institutions and government agencies. In its relatively short history of just over a decade, it has developed substantially and has been playing a key role in putting the small island of Gozo on the international cultural map.