Category Archives: Malta

Malta’s Old Capital

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Before La Valletta became Malta’s capital in the 16th century the island’s capital was Mdina, Arabic for ‘walled city’ but known in Italian as ‘La Notabile’. Situated in the centre of the island it makes a welcome change from the busy life of La Valletta and entering inside the town’s austere Arab walls we found it very pleasant to wander through quiet, almost deserted streets lined with several noble mansions.

The cathedral of Saint Paul is Mdina’s most ‘Notabile’ building. Mediaeval in origin it was completely reconstructed after a major earthquake in the late seventeenth century whose epicentre was at Noto in Sicily.  Saint Paul now presents an elegant baroque appearance which is not unduly fussy.

We also visited the cathedral’s museum with its rich collection of ecclesiastical vestments and paintings.

Malta has a total of 359 churches in a country with a population of just 514,564 inhabitants. Most of these buildings have something of interest distinguishing them. Clearly it would be impossible to see them all. However, of the handful that we visited we remember the following as outstanding:

The parish church of the Assumption (Mosta Rotunda) – Mosta.

St John’s co-cathedral – Valletta (already described in my previous posts on Malta).

The Collegiate Parish Church of St Paul’s Shipwreck – Valletta. Here are some of our photos of this lovely baroque building in La Valletta.

Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Paul – Mdina (described in this post).

Here is a useful list of some of the best Maltese churches:

9 Of Malta’s Most Beautiful Churches

As a young lad I collected stamps and was particularly proud of my Commonwealth collection especially the section on Malta. In the definitive series of Queen Elizabeth II stamps was this one showing the Mosta Rotunda. It had always been my ambition to visit it and finally I did!

Mosta Rotunda church was built in the 19th century to a design by the Maltese architect Giorgio Grognet de Vassé who believed that his island was a remnant of the great kingdom of the now underwater Atlantis. Its dome, with a diameter of 37 metres, is reckoned to be the fourth largest in Europe and the ninth largest in the world. Clearly inspired by Rome’s Pantheon the building was completed in 1860.

We found the rotunda’s interior very noble with its neo-classical style. The religious devotion of the Maltese must be truly intense to have been able to raise funds in their little island for such a magnificent church.

Malta is strictly speaking the name given to just the larger of its two main islands. We still had to take the ferry to Gozo, the other island, and discover its very special charms harking back to pre-package holiday times…

Popeye Lives in Malta

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‘Know what’s on the telly tonight?’ said excitedly a classmate at my primary school.’ ‘No, what?’ I answered. ‘Popeye!’ he exclaimed. I wondered who this Popeye was since I had never heard of him before. That evening I watched my first Popeye cartoon and immediately fell in love with the brazen, sometimes ingenuous but always triumphant character that had to constantly fight it out with Bluto the bully for the affection of Olive Oyl and with his can of spinach at the last moment helping him to win the day.

Fast-forward to 1980 and Popeye appeared on the big screen at our local Odeon in the guise of Robin Williams as the indomitable sailor man and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl, his scatter-brain woman.

It was the wonderful Robin Williams’ first major film role and yet I was not unduly taken by it. I couldn’t understand a musical where the songs were so unmemorable, a plot which seemed so inconsequential and a dialogue which appeared to be largely the sailor’s incomprehensible mumblings.

The best thing about the film for me was the picturesque setting of Sweethaven the seaside fishing village where the drama was played out.

We were motoring along the southern Maltese coast when, suddenly, we came across what seemed to be an attractive fishing village.

It was Sweethaven, the film set for ‘Popeye’ and appears to have been built in a much longer-lasting way than most other film sets causing the film-making budget to increase alarmingly to twenty million dollars. (In fact, the film recouped its costs making almost three times as much).

Constructed film sets are by definition evanescent articles. True, when actual places are used then they will attract visits. Goodness knows how often the two major historic buildings in our part of London have been used for shooting films. The Royal Naval College appears, for example, in the version of ‘The Bounty’ starring Anthony Hopkins and much of the TV series ‘Porterhouse Blue’ takes place in Charlton house.

Despite its supposed schmaltzy connotations, Sweethaven turned out to be a fun experience. In fact, a really sweet one.   We enjoyed visiting the village’s pseudo-nineteenth century north-west American coastal architecture and found the museum exhibits on the making of the film and the history of Popeye himself fascinating. We were also entertained by the show depicting Popeye and Olive Oyl’s wedding and even joined in and were immortalized in the film that was taken of it!

Our visit to Sweethaven reminded us that Malta’s heritage is not only baroque fortifications and Neolithic temples but also involves its location for feature films. For example, ‘Gladiator’ (Oliver Reed, the owner of the gladiator school in the film, died after a drinking binge in Valletta’s ‘The Pub’), the ‘Da Vinci code’, and several James Bond films, including ‘Never say Never’, were all shot in Malta. There’s a more complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_shot_in_Malta

Popeye sang “I yam what I yam an’ tha’s all I yam”. He also uttered “That’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!” which is what a lot of us feel at the moment regarding a major world health crisis! That’s why it’s so nice to hark back to our visits before the world changed for ever and when the great Robin Williams was still alive.

May the spirit of Popeye live in all of us during these hard times!

Into the Depths of Maltese Prehistory

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What are the oldest free-standing buildings in the world? Stonehenge? The Pyramids? Skara Brae? Something yet to be discovered?

So far the oldest buildings found today date from around 10,000 BC and are at Göbekli Tepe, Urfa in Turkey. The Neolithic temples of Malta, however, come a close second as the earliest examples of free-standing architecture that have survived. Of these temples (at seven sites discovered in Malta – including Hafgar Qin, Mnajdra and Tarxien on the main Island and Ggantija on Gozo) we managed to visit Tarxien, perhaps the most elaborate of them. Dating from at least 2800 BC they were discovered in 1914 and excavated in the two following years.

There are four temples on the site and they are distinguished by the quality of their carvings which consist of spirals and friezes of domestic animals including bulls, goats, pigs and a ram. Clearly these animals were raised by the population but they could also have been used as sacrifices to the gods.

There is also a part of a giant stone sculpture of the Mother Goddess which is the first known statue of a female deity and which was originally over nine feet high.

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A Turtle Dove of a Rococo Opera

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One of the unexpected highlights of our visit to Malta was a performance of ‘Zanaida’, an opera by Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, at the Manoel Theatre, La Valletta.

I had never realized that Malta has one of the finest baroque theatres in the world quite on a par with those at Drottningholm, Prague and Bologna. Every year it holds a festival of baroque (and rococo) music.

To hear an eighteenth century opera in a theatre dating from 1731 on a tiny island in the Mediterranean was absolutely irresistible!

The Manoel theatre was commissioned by Antonio Manoel de Vilhena, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, “for an honest recreation of the people”. This motto was inscribed on the main entrance of the building and it’s still there to this day.  In the next half of the century, the theatrical repertoire expanded to include operas by Johann Adolf Hasse, Niccolò Piccini and Baldassare Galuppi.

The theatre suffered a period of decline in the nineteenth century when the new opera house (mentioned in my previous Maltese posts) was built and during the Second World War it became a collection center for the victims of the bombing of the Axis forces.

After the destruction of the Royal Opera House by enemy bombings in 1942, the Manoel Theatre was restored to its ancient splendour.  The adjacent 18th century Palazzo Bonnici was added to the theatre and this is where the bar and ticket office are located.

The theatre is not very large. It has 623 seats and an oval-shaped auditorium which is built entirely of gilded wood and with a beautiful painted ceiling.   We managed to book seats near the top tier (using the internet facility of my now historic Kindle which actually worked there, unlike Italy and the UK).

Our seats were a little like standing at the edge of a cliff; it was a slightly uneasy experience, but the stage was fully visible and when the opera began I was utterly bowled over by the theatre’s acoustics. They were so clear, so immediate – an absolutely seductive experience.

‘Zanaida’ was premiered in London at the King’s theatre in 1763 and was J. C. Bach’s second opera composed for that city. It was so successful that Johann Christian decided to make his home in London where he is buried in St Pancras old churchyard (see my post on that at https://longoio3.com/2017/12/03/dove-si-fidanzarano-percy-bysshe-e-mary-shelley/).

However, the score of Zanaida was lost until it turned up in someone’s library in 2010. In this respect do check your own library to see if there are any lost opera manuscripts lurking there. I examined my own modest collection and, lo and behold, an ancient  libretto of an opera by Piccini (not to be confused with Puccini!) turned up. So there!

Based on political and sentimental intrigues between Persia and Turkey ‘Zanaida’ capitalizes on the vogue for oriental subjects which produced such masterpieces as Mozart’s ‘Abduction for the Seraglio’ and is based on ‘Siface’ by the great opera librettist Pietro Metastasio.

Turkish Princess Zanaida is an ideal of opera seria feminine tolerance who eventually finds herself in the midst of pitiless psychopaths who almost execute her. The music, however, is certainly not violent but beautifully expressive with gorgeous arias and elegant minuets. There is a particularly stunning virtuoso piece called ‘Tortorella abbandonata’ (‘abandoned turtle dove’) specially composed by Johann Christian for soprano Anna de Amicis. It has one of the first obbligato uses of a new instrument in that century, the clarinet. You can hear it here performed by Sara Hershkowitz from the Opera Fuoco production we attended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHQjKWRVcmo

I found out that Zanaida is also appropriately the name of a dove. The Zanaida dove is native to the West Indies and the Yucatán peninsula. The name, which is attributed to the species by French ornithologist Carlo Luciano Bonaparte, commemorates his wife Zénaïde Bonaparte, daughter of Giuseppe Bonaparte and Julie Clary.

Incidentally, why is the turtle dove described with the word of an animal to which it bears absolutely no resemblance? It’s because that word actually derives from the bird’s soft ‘turr turr’ call (in Italian ‘tortora’). Biblical references, like the ‘Song of Songs’ to turtle doves and the birds’ strong pair bonds have turned them into symbols of devoted love….just like the sentiments expressed in the opera aria ‘Tortorella abbandonata’.

The full performance of ‘Zanaida’ that we heard is recorded live here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEwmNf0Edn8

Parenthetically, Anna de Amicis went on to sing in the sixteen-year-old Mozart’s opera ‘Lucio Silla’ which we too heard in a concert performance at London’s Spitalfields church festival conducted by the late Richard Hickox. When Wolfgang wrote poignantly about Bach’s death in one of his letters it was clearly Johann Christian and not Johann Sebastian he was referring to. How wonderful that Anna was able to premiere works by both J. C. Bach and Mozart!

The performers in Malta were members of ‘Opera Fuoco’, a French lyric ensemble founded by David Stern in 2003 and dedicated to the performance of operatic repertoire from the beginning of the 18th to the end of the 19th centuries. I could not fault them in any way. The production was faithful to eighteenth century practice, including appropriate contemporary costumes and the use of baroque hand gestures to express emotions. I get rather fed up when performances of eighteenth century opera are historically informed as to the use of period instruments and singing but completely philistine as far as pretentious modern costumes and scenery are concerned, just to please the egos of pompous producers.

It was quite an experience, after the excellent performance, to walk out into the mild winter evening of La Valletta and find our way to that hotel which we always had some difficulty in locating. We truly had had an honest recreation.

Musing on Valletta’s Museums

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There is so much crammed into the compact area of La Valletta. Having admired its old houses from the outside we wanted to see their interiors and get a glimpse of how the Maltese aristocracy live.  The casa Rocca Piccola, otherwise known as the Messina palace, is owned by the Marquis Nicholas de Piro and dates from 1580. It is now open to the public and is very well presented. I would have loved to have attended a dinner party in its elegant dining room which transported us to a more leisurely century. I especially loved seeing the galleriji or wooden balconies encircling the house from the inside.

There are several museums in La Valletta and we managed to see the following:

The Grand Master’s palace, State rooms and armoury. Every Knight of Saint John on his death bed would bequeath his suit of armour to the grand master and once there were 25,000 such suits.  Napoleon pinched a lot of them but what remains is still remarkable!

Looking at loads of flintlocks can be a bit exhausting after a while, no matter how finely detailed they are. They are paradoxically truly artistic instruments of war in a way that today’s guided missiles hardly are!

The Fine Arts museum housed in the former admiralty is full of interesting paintings of Maltese scenes and it has a fine collection of Italian baroque painter Mattia Preti’s works. As mentioned in my previous post Preti was adopted by the Maltese and contributed to the decoration of some of their most spectacular buildings like Saint John’s co-cathedral.

I was also surprised to find water-colours by Edward Lear (who loved Malta). Absolutely no nonsense here!

There was also a fabulous picture of the Grand Harbour by Turner (who never actually visited Malta.)

I was particularly interested in Malta’s archaeological museum which gave us much insight into the fascinating Neolithic temples and burial sites we would visit.

Some of the earliest known representations of the human figure are here including the famous ‘sleeping lady of Malta’.

Clearly in those prehistoric times fat and well-endowed women were particularly prized as they represented fertility figures. No slim-fits here!

It’s good that all these museums are maintained by the ‘Heritage Malta’ government department. There was a time when Malta was  known just as a sun-and-beach holiday destination and, unfortunately, its rich heritage was neglected. Today the islands’ historical monuments are being revalued and, with the help of funds from European Union, there’s a full scale restoration going on in the island.

The fortifications, for example, are looking more splendid than ever.

Like many Italian seaside resorts, Rimini for example with its imposing Malatesta temple and Amalfi, once one of Italy’s great maritime republics (recall the other three?) Malta is equally worth visiting because of its fascinating heritage just as much for its sun and sand (though, actually, there isn’t too much of the latter, as we found out…)

Valletta’s Giant Treasure Casket

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The centre piece of La Valletta is St John’s co-cathedral, the conventual church, dating from 1577, of the order of the Knights of Saint John. It’s called a co-cathedral since Malta has another cathedral in its former capital of Mdina.

The exterior, flanked by two bell towers, is rather sober:

It certainly doesn’t prepare for the enveloping sumptuousness on stepping inside. One gets the feeling of  entering a huge golden treasure casket:

The barrel vault is magnificently decorated in baroque style with much work completed in 1666 by the Calabrian painter Mattia Preti. One of Italy’s major seventeenth century artists Preti is also responsible for works in many other Maltese churches and is buried in the cathedral to which he devoted so much of his art.

Yet one does not visit St John’s to principally see Preti’s paintings but instead to admire a masterpiece from the hand of one of the most controversial baroque artists, Michelangelo Merisi known as ‘Il Caravaggio’. Fleeing to Malta from a murder he was involved with in Naples (his violent temper often got him into scrapes and he later had to flee from Malta itself) Caravaggio painted the altar-piece in the oratory depicting the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. It’s the largest painting he produced and the only one he signed. The tough realism and his virtuoso ‘chiaroscuro’ (’light ‘dark’) technique are absolutely stunning.

The cathedral’s side chapels are dedicated to the eight langues or divisions of the order of Saint John and contain funerary monuments of the Grand Masters.  The splendid inlaid marble floor is made up of tombstones, decorated with heraldic devices of the knights.

We also visited the cathedral museum which holds a collection of rich ecclesiastical vestments and a magnificent collection of Flemish tapestries.

The richness of the furnishing of La Valletta’s St John’s cathedral gave us an indication of how much wealth the Knights of Saint John must have possessed in their heyday. It was a wealth to which every major European power contributed for La Valletta stood (and still symbolically stands, as the Pope’s visits demonstrate) as a bastion of Christianity against the onslaught of Mohammedanism.

Today a different kind of onslaught is occurring. Rather than military it is a desperate one: the arrival of refuges across the sea from Africa landing on the shores of this tiny nation. Indeed, relations between Italy and Malta have often been somewhat strained because of this situation and it continues to remain a very difficult matter.

La Valletta’s Galleriji

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La Valletta, Malta’s capital, may lay claim to be one of the first planned cities of modern Europe. After the Great Siege of 1565 and the defeat of the Ottoman forces the Knights of Saint John felt the need to build a new fortified centre on the island as a defence against possible further incursions from the Turk. La Valletta was, therefore, founded in 1566 by the Knights who gave it the name of their Grand Master, Jean de la Valette.

Laid out in a grid pattern and surrounded by massive fortifications Valletta enchants one as soon the main gate is crossed. The grid pattern itself is not just designed to be neat, for its straight streets lined by tall buildings enable the capital to be well-ventilated and shaded thus attenuating the ferocious summer heat.

(1723 Plan of La Valletta)

What is less enchanting, however, is the innovative development at the gate. This consists of new parliament buildings designed by Enzo Piano which have given rise to much controversy, largely because they contrast so much with the sixteenth-century architecture of the city. During our visit the buildings were being constructed and under wraps so we could not fairly judge for ourselves.

Certainly, the adaption of Fort Saint Elmo, for example, might have given the Maltese parliament a more respectful building.

Next to the parliament building are the ruins of the grand nineteenth century opera house bombed by those supreme opera-lovers, the Italian air force, when they entered the war in 1940. Again, we did not yet see what ‘Shard’ Piano was going to do with this building. He has, nonetheless, preserved the opera house’s ruined status but converted it into an open-air theatre.

This conversion seems less controversial. In any case La Valletta has one of the most beautiful original eighteenth century theatres in the world which still retains its supreme importance in Maltese cultural life. The Teatru Manoel could not allow something else to steal its fire. But I anticipate….

We loved wandering through the streets of La Valletta. In particular I enjoyed gazing at the traditional Maltese balconies built to shade its inhabitants from the summer heat. Called ‘gallariji’ in Maltese (note the Italian linguistic influence) these charming features are supported on stone corbels called saljaturi (c.f. Italian : sogliature) with the hinged glass flaps known as are purtelli (cf. Italian sportelli) and their blinds are known as tendini (cf. Italian: tendine).

Apart from shading the occupants from the heat the gallariji are used for hanging out the washing and, formerly, as a way for marriageable belles to disport themselves before prospective suitors while safely being tucked away from the perils of the streets.

Galleriji come in all shapes and sizes and have often finely carved ‘saljaturi’. Here is a small selection of them. I love the way some of them curve round the corners of the buildings.

As you can see I just couldn’t get enough of these marvellous architectural features which are so characteristic of traditional Maltese buildings. I sometimes think that with the smaller galleriji affixed onto terraced houses there is a connection with the love of English suburbia for bay windows. Both extend from the main building and both allow extra light to enter their houses.

Later in our visit to Malta we were able to see the elegant interiors of the more aristocratic of these houses and walk down a gallerija. But that must await another post…

 

 

Towards the Little Bee

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I love islands. I suppose that’s quite natural since I was born on one famously described by Shakespeare as ’this sceptered isle, this fortress built by Nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea’.

It’s just a pity that infection has indeed invaded the sceptered isle. As recently noted by some politicians if only this island had truly become a fortress last March then the current health crisis would not have afflicted it in the dire way it continues to do. There is no such island in the centre of China, yet the inhabitants of Wuhan, where the first cases of Covid-19 arose, are now living normal mask-less lives just one year later and celebrating the fact.

I have been island hopping on four of the five world’s continents. These hops have taken me from the lone Atlantic isle of St Kilda to the lush tropicana of Bali, from the Caribbean sands of Antigua to the pearl that is Sri Lanka. Living in a Mediterranean country I am surrounded by a variety of islands of all shapes and sizes. The isles of Greece, from Cephalonia to Chios, and those around Italy have been destinations filled with lovely memories. We have not only landed on Italy’s two big islands of Sardinia and Sicily but also those smaller gems such as Elba, and Giglio. And French Corsica too (although it was Italian once).

Eight years ago we visited an island which might have had the possibility of being Italian but instead steadfastly maintained its own identity. Malta is indeed a linchpin joining the Arab to the European world. Part of the European Union it is the only member speaking a Semitic language: Maltese combines Arabic with Sicilian Italian. Yet it is the only Semitic language written using the western alphabet. Moreover, the islanders are fervently Roman Catholic and only 2% are of Muslim religion.

I’d always thought of Malta as a typical summer holiday island especially popular with brits and it certainly is that. But it’s a lot more as well. Prehistoric settlers built some of the finest Neolithic temples to be found anywhere. During the Bronze Age they were succeeded by a new wave of immigrants.  Then followed the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Normans, the Spanish and the Knights of Saint John who made Malta’s minuscule capital La Valletta into one of the finest fortified cities of Europe quite on a par with places like Lucca and Palmanova. Napoleon held the island for some years before it passed to the British who made it into a key naval base protecting their Mediterranean fleet.

During the Second World War Malta suffered terribly from bombardments and its population were close to starvation in a siege lasting nearly a year. But it survived and all its inhabitants were awarded the George Cross for valour. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the island’s steadfastness the axis forces would never have been defeated in North Africa and the allied invasion of Italy, operation Husky, would never have taken place.

Malta has been able to defend itself well during the current health crisis. Unlike the UK its lock-down was immediate and very strict and the population of half a million inhabitants has had 248 Covid-19 deaths so far, all unfortunately since last September and all part of the ghastly second wave.

I only starting blogging regularly in March  2013 and so Malta missed my scrutiny. However, I have always kept files of the places I visit filled with relevant material of the sights seen and, of course, there is my photographic record.

The airline ticket shows that we flew from Pisa airport to Malta on the 8th of January 2013 at 18.05 and landed at Malta airport less than two hours later.

We hired a car and then drove to our pre-booked hotel at Bugibba in the north-eastern part of Malta by the sea.

It was a slightly annoying feature of our holiday that we could never quite locate the Relax Inn Hotel, as it was called, after our journeys around the island. This may have probably been because it was a singularly undistinguished building although our room was comfortable and the facilities were quite adequate. Bugibba is a concrete sprawl catering principally for bucket-and-spade holiday makers and with a plentiful supply of pubs. There are more characteristically Maltese places to stay in La Valletta but we were fairly happy to be sojourning in Bugibba and it proved an excellent base for visiting the island’s sights. Malta is anyway so compact – just a fifth of the size of London!

Even in January there were several brits in the hotel. Evidently spending winter in Malta is rather cheaper than forking out money on those UK fuel bills. Unhappily, however, tourism has all but collapsed in Malta this last year. I do not think there will be many able to abandon Malden for Malta.

Next morning we headed for La Valletta to begin our exploration. Although a republic since 1974, a part of the European Union since 2004 and of the Eurozone since 2008, Malta is also a member of the Commonwealth and continues with various idiosyncratic British traditions, not least that of driving on the left-hand side of the road!

We crossed a bridge and entered inside the mighty bastions of La Valletta.

We were  soon reminded that the island had once belonged to the United Kingdom. The special character of la Valletta was beginning to unfold itself before us.

Some of you may wonder why this post is titled ‘Towards the Little Bee’. That’s because the ancient name of Malta was Melita and Melita is Greek for ‘little bee’. Malta is, indeed, famous for its honey. The liquid gold is produced throughout the year, altering its flavour as the flowers change.  Busy bees collect spring nectar from a wide variety of wild flowers including white thistle, sulla, borage, dandelion, wild mustard and also citrus trees. It is popular as a remedy against allergies and hay fever. Summer honey comes from highly aromatic thyme. Autumn honey is flavoured by carob and eucalyptus trees. It was the Phoenicians who introduced bee-keeping in Melita so the tradition is a very long one indeed.