Concerto Italiano
Last night Malta was given a very special treat. A concert was organised on the Valletta Waterfront that brought three greats of Italian music to the island: Claudio Baglioni, Riccardo Cocciante and Gianni Morandi! The best part of it was that it was FREE!
The concert was supposed to bring awareness about illegal immigration, which is an important topic in Malta at the moment as I have mentioned before. Apparently they do it every year on the Italian island of Lampedusa , a tiny one smaller than Malta and even closer to the African coast that also receives hundreds of refugees every week. (The difference is that they can be sent to the Italian mainland, while Malta is running out of space where to house them while they process their asylum claims). While a few passing references were made about this problem, mostly it was a fun concert and the crowd was very excited to see these singers.
A love of Italian music is something I share with a large part of the Maltese population, and while I am not familiar with these singers in particular, I still enjoyed it very much. Everyone was singing along and getting excited as the three famous singers improvised, sang together and let out their old classics. Claudio Baglione even sang a song in Maltese, which the crowd found amusing. (I heard a lot of too-exagerated surprised gasps that a foreigner would sing in Maltese, but we all know this is a topic that annoys me and I do not feel like going on about it at great length right now. YES people, it is possible for a foreigner to sing in Maltese, and NO it is not that difficult. Plenty of singers sing versions of their songs in other languages by simply learning them by heart. But I digress.)
As a warm-up, there were three Maltese singers. First, one whose name escapes me but he had no voice and the crowd was not exactly impressed. Then the band Wintermoods, which raised the spirit a bit, and then Malta ’s international pop star Ira Losco. I had never heard her sing, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not only does she have a talented voice, but she really defines stage presence. She really knew how to bring up the crowd!
A funny aside is that the presenter of the concert was Italian television personality Fabrizio Frizzi. He hosts a TV contest show called “I soliti ignoti” that M and I sometimes watch. It was exciting for me to see a TV personality in the flesh. It is not like I ever get to meet any Hollywood actors, but I certainly did not expect any Italian ones to be flying in to Malta !
The whole experience was an interesting example of language use in Malta . The presenter and singers spoke almost entirely in Italian, confident that the Maltese would understand everything, which they did. There was a Maltese co-presenter who said a few things in Maltese throughout the night, with the occasional bits in English here and there. I felt very at ease, being able to follow it all.
Though I had expected chaos at the offer of a free concert, everything was very well organised and ran very smoothly. One of the nicest things I noticed was that there were people of all ages present, from little children to some elderly people. Everyone stood for hours and shared in a collective atmosphere of happiness.
At the end of the night, everyone joined in to “Volare” which happens to be one of my favourite tunes. Finally a song that I knew! I happily belted out “nel blu… dipinto di blu…” with the crowd.
