Italian opera singers in Malta in the middle of the eighteenth century

Abstract

In his pioneering work on the history of the Manoel Theatre, Paul Xuereb brings out the difficulties that any researcher who intends to study the early history of secular music in Malta, in particular opera, will have to face. “Unfortunately, little information is extant about the Italian players or their production, for apart from the absence of the theatre archives, reviews or notices of plays very rarely appeared in contemporary newspapers, unless they were productions for charity”.

Research difficulties increase for the period under study since no newspaper existed. This essay should be considered as a work-in-progress paper aimed at shedding new light on some of the opera singers at the Manoel Theatre in the 1760s. In fact, the scope is to share, with the reader, the preliminary results of an extensive research that is being carried out in Malta and Italy on the presence of Italian singers in Malta.