Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/829524
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 28 MAY 2017 51 This Week Gozo's Gaulitanus Choir has recently par- ticipated at the 20th edition of the Festival di Pasqua held in Rome, Italy. This followed an invitation by the Associazione Festival di Pas- qua – a direct result of the ongoing collabora- tion between the choir-organised Gaulitana: A Festival of Music and the Festival di Pas- qua's artistic director Enrico Castiglione, who has been collaborating with the choir for the past years for its annual operatic production. Very suggestive of this link is the fact that the choir's performances were held at the magnificent Basilica of Sant'Andrea della Valle. Indeed, the first act of Puccini's Tosca – which was the first opera put on during Gaulitana – is set in this grand basilica in the very heart of the Eternal City. The first of the choir's two musical commit- ments was the animation of the liturgy dur- ing the Saturday evening mass celebrated by the basilica's rector Rev. Carlos Gomez-Ruiz on May 20. A full-scale concert followed on Sunday evening. The concert consisted of 3 parts. The first, called Preludio di Ave Maria, consisted of various Ave Maria composed by Arcadelt, Schubert, Beethoven, Mascagni and Gibilaro. The second part, entitled Interludio di musi- ca Maltese, consisted of works by the choir's founder-director Colin Attard, whereas the third part, called Finale di celebri pezzi sagri, presented several well-known works by Bach, Mozart, Franck, Verdi, Bizet and Young. Encouraged by an appreciative audience the choir gave an encore: fittingly, Giuseppe Caruana's Fil-Hlewwa ta' Mejju – as arranged by Colin Attard, as was the case with several other works. For these Festival di Pasqua commitments, the choir's resident soloists, sopranos Anna- belle Zammit and Stephanie Portelli and bass Ian Grech, were joined by two guest soloists, soprano Georgina Gauci and tenor Charles Vella Zarb. The choir was accompanied by its resident organist Stephen Attard and also featured Pierre Louis Attard on the violin. The choir's founder-director Colin Attard conducted. This choir's first appearance in Rome, back-to back with a very successful concert- tour of Tuscany last December, was its 11th concert-tour abroad. Apart from Italy, previ- ous ventures on foreign soil took the choir to the UK, the Netherlands, Greece and Corsica (France). Gozo's Gaulitanus Choir participates in Rome festival Waders (or shorebirds) are a large and varied group that spend most of their waking hours ankle-deep in shallow water looking for aquatic invertebrates to eat. Many of them come in a rather drab palette of grey, black, brown and white, but flashy colours are not a very good idea when you live on open beaches and mudflats i.e. places with nowhere to hide. One infrequent wader that turns up in Malta is the Turnstone (M: Monakella Imperjali), which sports a pretty uniform despite the limited paintbox. It is not a large bird, and despite the lovely pattern, the markings on its plumage actually break up the bird's outline while foraging on rocky and pebbly shores. So why "turnstone"? Well, that's because it has this nifty trick of sticking its bill underneath small stones and flipping them aside to zap any hapless worm or crustacean hiding there. Visit Friends of the Earth's website for more information about our work, as well as for information about how to join us. You can also support us by sending us a donation - www.foemalta.org/donate Text Victor Falzon Photo Raymond Galea Bittersweet Chocolate Demands to Supermarkets (II) 559. TURNSTONE GREEN IDEA OF THE WEEK 462 TABLE PADDING: Lay newspaper underneath a table cloth on your kitchen or dining room table. It's an excellent replacement for expensive padding, and will help protect your table from spills and other damage. x Festival di Pasqua artistic director Enrico Castiglione congratulating Mro Attard and the Gaulitanus Choir. Photo: Stefano Sovrani x