Pics 1-4 are by Perkin Warbeck
Pic 1
Pic 2
.
Pic 3
Pic 4
SUB-PLOT by Perkin Warbeck
Pic 1 .Teatru Manoel is the third-oldest working theatre in Europe. A bijou theatre for the bijou city of Valletta. I It dates from 1731 and seats 623.
Pic 2 ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, by Oliver Goldsmith, after its recent run is now in the running for an O.B. award. No, not an Off-Broadway Award, but rather an O’Byrne Cup award. The dramatist was, of course, a Longford man. ‘The Jew of Malta’ by Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, contains one of the great one-liners in dramatic literature: ‘ Thou hast committed Fornication: but that was in a foreign country and besides, the wench is dead’. Marlowe was the same age as Hank Williams when he passed over: 29.
Pic 3 A view from the Presidential Box. Great names of the arts have graced the stage here from Minella Freni, Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislev, Rostropovich, Margaret Rutherford, and Kiri Te Kanewa to Donald Wolfit
Pic 4 Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the theatre is to discover its sub-plot, i.e., the subterranean city of Valletta. The smallest capital city in the world (it is 9 times smaller than the Phoenix Park) has its own Metro system dating from medieval times. Burrowed out mainly for defensive purposes it was also used as a route of preference by the Knights to the theatre as a way to avoid the hoi polloi and other groundlings. Nowadays, darkness is all there and so is more of a Night of Malta.
- Epilogue: In this theatre on Triq it-Teatru i-Antik the balance of productions is 50/50 between Malti and English. This sounds fairly reasonable in a bilingual society. The Abbey Theatre /Amharclann na Mainistreach, whose stock in trade is to be a Laughing Stock, please note.
- (‘Céad Míle Fáilte’ by Perkin Warbeck).
Pics 5 -8 are by John Patton (see more at www.phototilly.eu )
Pic 5
Pic 6
Pic 7
Pic 8
“Approving of the pictures I have seen here by CameraLens and Perkin, capturing their immediate environment, I thought viewers might have an interest in the part of Scotland where I live. The nearest city is Stirling where the university this year like Coleraine , celebrates its 50th anniversary . I was married there in 1971.
Pic 5 is of Auld Stirling Brig. In 1297 Scottish forces , led by Moray and William Wallace scored a rare defeat over the English. The Wallce Memorial may be glimpsed in the background against the Ochils..
Pics 6, 7 and 8 are in the immediate vicinity of my home. We are fortunate to live in a very bonny area in the foothills of the Ochils. The snow drops have been replaced by the daffodils and we shall soon see the bluebells.”
Pics 9-14 are by Antrim Lens
Pic 9
Pic 10
Pic 11
Pic 12
Pic 13
Pic 14
“Life and death at my place. Having a cuppa and looking out my kitchen window mid-week, I noticed this robin bringing nest material to an overgrown patch at my veg plots. Most likely the nest has been completed and she’s sitting on eggs now, and so the robin’s life cycle begins.
Later the same day I was driving up my lane when my headlights illuminated a small flock of fieldfares and redwings, then, out of the darkness this male sparrow-hawk slammed into the small flock and pinned a fieldfare to the ground. The fieldfare fought for over 5 minutes for its life but it was to be in vain as the sparrow-hawk flew off with its kill back into the darkness. A couple of days later the small flock left my fields and headed back to Scandinavia for the summer, a couple of days too late for one fieldfare. “
Comments are closed.