Times² discovers the festival’s packed programme for Easter, including salon songs from Puccini and Verdi, and a Vatican-recommended vintage film.
On Wednesday April 16th the vintage silent movie La Vie et La Passion will be shown with musical improvisation on the organ by Stefano Vagnini, music based on both local and international melodies related to the Holy week, many of which will be familiar to festival goers.
This innovative festival event is a great opportunity to see the film was included by the Vatican in a list of important films (1995), the oldest entry to make the cut. The original was produced in thirteen parts in 1903 made in the stencil colour process Pathéchrome. Directed by pioneering French filmmaker Georges Hatot and Louis Jean Lumière, who played a key role in the development of photography and cinema, at 44 minutes in length, it is often considered to be the first ever feature film shown. “Festival visitors can enjoy it set to music on screen in the Basilica of the Visitation, Għarb,” smiles Festival Director Colin Attard “and I’m very excited to be adding this new dimension to our programme.”
“Then on Easter Saturday, the newly refurbished neo-Baroque Savina Church in Victoria is the perfect setting for a lunchtime concert of classical Baroque music and the solo string music of top Maltese musician Sarah Spiteri on the Baroque violin and viola,” he continues. “The event will feature works by some of most celebrated composers from the mid-17th to early 18th century, showcasing their stylistic diversity, and the virtuosity that defined the period.”
“We have chosen to celebrate Easter itself with Puccini and Verdi, but atypically,” he smiles. “Rather than presenting the popular arias, we are focusing on their art songs, the pieces that were typical in 19th century Italian-type salons. The soprano Stephanie Portelli and pianist Maria-Elena Farrugia will be performing them, in the evening, in Ta Ċenċ Hotel bar, which is the perfect informal setting for this event. They’re very interesting because they are performed less often, and they also tie-in perfectly with the printed works we have on show in the festival exhibition at the citadel, In Harmony: 19th Century Music Printing in Malta.”
Concluding the Easter celebrations, there is a chamber music performance on April 21st, in St Anthony of Padova Church in Għajnsielem. “We always hold our events in venues in different venues and villages all across the island,” Attard adds. This event, Triptych, brings together two Gozitan performers, Pierre Louis Attard and Frak Camilleri on the violin and cello with the Italian violinist, Klara Nazaj, who is now based in Malta. They’ll be playing a mixed programme of classical and contemporary pieces including Vivaldi Trio Sonata No. 12 – the composer’s take on La Follia, one of the oldest known European musical themes on record. The music’s distinctive chords were originally developed from the popular folk music of late 15th-century Portugal, and its name, which translates from Italian to folly or madness, refers to the frenzied dancing that accompanied the tune!
See the first Times2 feature on this year’s Gaulitana festival, and the events taking place before the Easter weekend, here. The festival continues until Sunday May 4th, with the opera Nabucco and a grand finale on the final weekend.
Gaulitana: A Festival of Music is principally supported by the Investment in Cultural Organisations – Gozo of Arts Council Malta and the Ministry for Gozo”
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