Midsummer Nights' Dreams

The passion of flamenco. The intense rhythms of tango. The colour and drama of street theatre. This year’s warm summer evenings will soon lilt to the floating notes of open-air concerts and the high emotions of dance and theatre, as the capital provides the backdrop to an eclectic series of art events, filling the nights with passion and poetry.

Spanning three weeks of events in July, the Malta Arts Festival is back in its fourth edition, bringing together high-calibre artists and performers from Italy, England, Holland, Germany, Lithuania and Spain who will all perform within the capital and its surroundings.
Organized by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, this year’s highlights will include performances by world-renowned artists such as The Globe Theatre from London, the Arditti Quartet and Enrico Dindo as well as other artists of high calibre such as Roberto Cominati, Scarlattine Teatro, Azar Teatro, the Rosa Ensemble from Holland and Renaud Garcia Fons.

“The artistic direction endeavours to invite to Malta top international artists and to organise events of ever increasing high standards,” says artistic director Mario Frendo. The festival includes local artists who have found fame and fortune in the arts scene abroad and locally, such as Malta’s own Cikka Grima with her Puerto Flamenco group; French horn player Etienne Cutajar, the Cosmos Ensemble, and Maltese actors Pino Scicluna and Peter Busuttil.

On the visual arts front, the Malta Arts Festival has commissioned artist Patrick J Fenech to curate an exhibition entitled “The Life Model” which brings together Malta-based artists Vince Briffa, Antony Calleja, Jeni Caruana, Patrick Dalli, Alexandra Pace, Raphael Vella as well as Astrid Steinbrecher from Germany and Zygimantas Augustinas from Lithuania. This promises to be an exhibition in which artists from different genres of visual art practices will be showing oil paintings, etchings, drawings, photography, mixed media and video creations.

Venues have been selected to match the performances, with most being held in the capital and its surroundings, including the atmospheric President’s Palace courtyard and the beautiful Argotti Gardens.

As in previous editions, the festival brings together dance, theatre, visual arts and music in an exciting whirlwind of activity that promises not only 15 events in quick succession but also down-to-earth price tags, with ticket prices ranging around
€10-15 bracket, in line with the Council’s policy of making the arts accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

The Malta Arts Festival will run from 1-24 July. The events are supported by HSBC and Hotel Phoenicia, Valletta Local Council and Malta Post and functions within the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport. For more info visit www.maltaartsfestival.com

For programme details see www.maltaculture.com