Celebrating a choir’s pearl anniversary at a time when most have been silenced worldwide is surely depressing, not least for Gozo’s Gaulitanus Choir. Its various scheduled 2020 events had to be cancelled, with its last ‘normal’ event taking place on January 1.
Still, the organisation persevered, doing its utmost to enhance positivity through virtual contributions and some COVID-compliant public concerts. It was also a time to look back on its past.
The Gaulitanus Choir was launched in 1990. Before that, its founder-director, Mro Colin Attard, then starting to make the rounds in musical circles, used to form ad hoc choral groups whenever needed, with choristers hailing from all over Gozo. However, upon being entrusted with two large-scale events for the Qala parish, it was decided that the choral group be formalised and named. The name ‘Gaulitanus’, meaning ‘of Gozo’, was chosen.
It was unheard of at that time in Gozo to form a non-affiliated and secularly orientated choir, as was the case with the Gaulitanus Choir. Yet, it gradually started making inroads – contributing to the development of culture and the shaping of concert activity in Gozo ever since.
Soon after its debut, the choir also started sounding its tones in mainland Malta, which recurred in various ways thenceforth. Perhaps most memorable are its participations in the highly rated Carmelo Pace grand concerts organised by the Mdina Cathedral Museum between 1997 and 2008.
Maltese works are a staple in the choir’s repertoire – a mix of secular, sacred and light, with new genres sometimes introduced. A most challenging feat for the choir is performing local music abroad – occasionally whole concerts in the Maltese language. This ‘ambassadorial’ role has become integral to the choir’s increasingly intensive international programme of events.
The Gaulitanus has toured 19 times around Italy, Corsica, France, England, Germany, Holland, Greece and Latvia. It performed at several highly prestigious venues, among which London’s Westminster Cathedral, Paris’s L’Église de la Madaleine and Rome’s Sant’ Andrea della Valle.
The choir wrote local choral history by featuring abroad three times in a single calendar year. A recurring feat for the past three years, this was only truncated by the pandemic. Moreover, it became the first Maltese choir to take part in an operatic production abroad, at Taormina’s Teatro Antico.
The choir’s annual calendar of events includes two fixed appointments: A New Year’s Toast, its Yuletide concert on January 1, and Gaulitana: A Festival of Music, a month-long international festival held in spring around Gozo.
Launched in 2007, this grew extensively, reaching new heights in 2014 when it started putting on a fully-fledged opera along its artistic programme.
The festival is an awardee of the prestigious EFFE label given by the European Festivals Association and has been dubbed by the UK’s oldest musical journal Musical Opinion as “a major festival of classical music”.
Gaulitanus Choir optimistically longs for a quick resumption of its full activity and for many more years of music-making.