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Treasures from Malta is a new podcast series produced by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti (FPM). Hosted and presented by Francesca Balzan, art historian and artist with a long connection with FPM, each podcast episode consists of individual interviews. We’re getting away from old artefacts in glass showcases and we’re going into the homes and meeting up with some of Malta’s living treasures. We dig below the surface and find out more about them. These treasures are artists, historians, art colle ...
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Joseph Calleja is one of the world’s foremost tenors. He has performed in numerous operatic roles, solo performances and concerts to great acclaim and has scooped up several major international awards, since his early operatic debut at 19 years of age at the Astra Theatre in Gozo. He is a recording artist with one of the top recording labels and ha…
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Meet artist and art historian Joseph Paul Cassar
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Joseph Paul Cassar is an artist and art historian whose studies have taken him from Africa to Australia, and he now resides and lectures in North America. He is a specialist on African and Modern European art and lectures at prestigious institutions and Universities in and around Washington DC. But his heart lies in the modern period of Maltese art…
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Michael Zammit is a poet and a philosopher who has a tendency to look East. He has mastered the difficult language of Sanskrit, and has studied and written extensively about it. He draws lessons from the great philosophical traditions of the East and finds connections with that of the West, using the East as his starting point. He has translated an…
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Vicki Ann Cremona is a prolific and distinguished academic who originally studied and taught French. In time she was drawn to theatre studies and dance, and has approached them from so many angles through her research and papers ranging from the architecture of theatres, to costume, to carnival. She has written extensively on these subjects and muc…
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Gillian Zammit is elegance personified. Her petite frame belies the incredibly powerful singing voice that has made her a household name. Her musical repertoire is vast and she is equally comfortable singing Baroque opera as she is with 20th century compositions. She has worked alongside such greats as Placido Domingo and Joseph Calleja and sung to…
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Philip Farrugia Randon is somewhat of a polymath with a multi-faceted career. He graduated as a lawyer in 1973, while simultaneously broadcasting programmes on radio and tv. Throughout his working life as a lawyer, specializing in banking law, he has engaged constantly with the arts. He is a practicing watercolourist as well as an art connoisseur w…
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Meet celebrity photographer Lorenzo Agius
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Lorenzo Agius is a celebrity photographer of Maltese descent. His roots are in art and art history but early on in his career he took up photography as his medium, working his way up from photography assistant to a fully-fledged freelance photographer. For decades now he has specialized in portraiture and fashion. Throughout his career, he has prod…
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Vince Briffa made the cross-over from industry to the academic field, while maintaining an art practice that has established him as one of the leading lights in the contemporary visual arts in Malta. He has attended numerous prestigious international art residencies. He has been invited to participate in countless exhibitions with important interna…
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Scenic artist Carmel Said has had a remarkable career. From art studies in Malta he went on to obtain further art degrees in London where he worked his way up to become one of the finest scenic artists, producing incredible sets that are beautiful works of painting and sculpture for the biggest names in the industry. From Paris to New York, if you …
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Meet percussionist and sound artist Renzo Spiteri
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Renzo Spiteri is a multi-percussionist, composer and improviser, a multimedia artist, a field recordist, sound designer, and arts collaborator. In essence he is a sound artist who seems to have no restrictions, such is his versatility and the extent of his experimentation. Literally every and any particular sound can be turned into music in his han…
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Dr Joan Abela is synonymous with archives. She is a well published historian who achieved distinction throughout her academic journey and now in turn fires up her students with enthusiasm for the past. She has wowed us with her many discoveries, her incredible, infectious passion for the past but most of all her almost militant attitude to combat n…
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Nico Conti is a ceramic artist who is working clay in exciting, radical new ways. From his undergraduate days at MCAST in Malta to finishing top of his class at the Royal College of Art in 2019, he has continually excelled. In the short space of a few years he has won numerous prestigious awards and scholarships. He is represented by major gallerie…
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Daniel Cilia is one of Malta’s foremost photographers. His artistry is much admired, going to great lengths not only to record what might soon disappear, but making seemingly impossible photographs that continuously elicit awe and wonder from his ever growing fan base. He is a Gozitan with a deep love for his birth island. Through his photography, …
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Rug and interiors designer Suzanne Sharp has had a very colourful career! Together with her husband, Christopher, she has risen to become one of the leading exponents in rug design internationally. Her roots are Maltese, and indeed the first shop that set the couple on their incredibly successful design path, was a shop they opened in Sliema. Since…
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Meet maritime archaeologist Timmy Gambin
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Timmy Gambin is a maritime archaeologist and an associate professor at the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. His interest is specifically in wrecks that lie deep below Maltese waters - whether they are ancient or date to World War II you can be sure he has either discovered them or knows all there is to know about t…
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Matty Cremona is an accomplished cook and food history writer. She has written four books and numerous articles about the history of food and the context of dining in Malta. Her knowledge of Malta’s food history, honed through years of research both in the archives and in her kitchen, has revealed new information and translated these old writings i…
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Anna Borg Cardona is a musician and music researcher whose eyes fire up with incredible excitement whenever she talks about the discoveries she keeps making in our many rich historic archives here in Malta. Through the decades she has discovered musicians and musical instrument makers from the past, she has uncovered and played long forgotten sheet…
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Prof. Joe Friggieri is a philosopher, a playwright, a theatre director, a poet and an author, not to mention a person who has been an influencer in the arts in Malta from decades before an influencer became ‘a thing’. He has packed all of this into a very industrious lifetime that commenced its academic trajectory with Ph.D.s from both Milan and Ox…
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Wayne Marshall is a conductor, pianist and organist of great international repute. He has performed widely in all of the principal concert halls and opera houses around the world, both as conductor and pianist, and sometimes simultaneously ! He is celebrated for his interpretation of Gershwin and Bernstein and other 20th century composers however h…
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In this podcast episode, we meet a knight! Frà John Edward Critien is a professed member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the only Maltese to have ever been elevated to the highest ranks of this International Order. For several years he lived in the Order’s Headquarters at the historic Palazzo Malta in Rome where he was Conservator of t…
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Giovanni Bonello has distinguished himself in both culture and the law. In culture he has left an indelible mark in researching, discovering and publishing his countless finds. He has provided new angles on the history of art in Malta as well as writing about myriad aspects of Maltese history. He has also written about the law, both critiques of co…
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Kim Dalli is an actress who has worked as a journalist in real life, as well as inhabiting the role in Herman Grech’s recent play ‘They Blew Her Up’. Her love for writing has also been directed towards script-writing and in this podcast she tells us about a very special project she is currently working on that casts her in the multi-faced role of r…
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Alex Camilleri is a Maltese-American film director who is particularly inspired by Malta and has set his debut film, LUZZU, in Malta. And what a film ! LUZZU became the first Maltese film to show at the highly prestigious Sundance film festival earning positive reviews. The lead actor, Jesmark Scicluna, a real life fisherman with no previous traini…
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Richard England is embedded in the national psyche as the Starchitect from Malta. He has won several international awards for his architectural work. He has been honoured by States, by various Universities and by all of the important international architectural associations. But beyond architecture, which is perhaps his most public face, he is a ma…
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Marquis Nicholas de Piro is the founder of the beautiful Casa Rocca Piccola House Museum in Valletta. He has opened his home to the public to share the many decades of shrewd art collecting. He was years ahead in recognising and appreciating various decorative art forms and unfashionable pieces of art well before others jumped onto the bandwagon. H…
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Andrew Alamango is a musician and archivist who has been the driving force behind Etnika, the band that reworked Maltese folk music and got the younger generation dancing to its beat. He also set up Malta’s Lost Voices, to make the earliest recordings of Maltese music accessible to the public, as well as creating the Magna Zmien project which digit…
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Miriam Gauci is an outstanding Maltese soprano who made it big on the international stage. From her formative years at Milan’s La Scala she never looked back, appearing time and again in leading roles in all the major opera houses worldwide. She has worked with the world’s foremost conductors such as Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti and directors l…
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Meet dance historian Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel
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Tuning in from leafy Surrey, we meet with Dr Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, dance historian, academic and author. From her early days twirling around the dining room chairs, Kathrina’s love for dance has grown and grown. It has driven her to pursue her studies in the U.K. and to forge an academic career that not only saw her lecturing in the area of danc…
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When he’s not examining artworks, writing books, curating exhibitions or lecturing, Prof. Keith Sciberras is invariably to be found in an archive. And with good reason. He’s made several discoveries and his infectious enthusiasm for all the surprises that a careful trawl through the archives yields, bubbles over in this conversation. Whether he’s s…
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Bernie Mizzi is on a lifelong mission to infect everyone with a love for the arts. As an educator she has been in a unique position to do so. In this conversation, she tells us all about her career in education, from school head to Pro-Chanceller at the University of Malta and various positions besides. These enabled her to influence arts programmi…
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Meet marine photographer Kurt Arrigo
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Whether above water or below, Kurt Arrigo’s photographs have wowed us for decades. His photography has taken him to the furthest corners of the earth, and, not content with that, he dove deep in distant oceans to bring the underworld to us through his lens. We discuss playing with (huge) baby whales, daredevilry and adventure, near shaves and breat…
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Meet book and paper conservator Theresa Zammit Lupi
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A career in book and paper conservation has taken Theresa Zammit Lupi from Sinai to Switzerland, Cambridge UK to Cambridge Massachusetts and many other places besides. We catch up with her in this first episode of the newly launched podcast series, Treasures from Malta, hosted by Francesca Balzan and produced by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. Theres…
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