Appreciation - Antoinette Soler, actress

Paul Xuereb writes:

Antoinette Soler was one of the outstanding actresses of the Maltese stage during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. While she could not vie with Karmen Azzopardi for sheer dramatic intensity, she was undoubtedly a very expressive and subtle actress of great roles in plays by Ibsen and Chekhov, for example.

She brought a lighter touch than Azzopardi to comedy and especially light comedy, the genre of which her husband Victor, who survives her, was such a master as director and, more rarely, actor.

I first got to know the Solers in 1964 when both Antoinette and I were cast by Francis Ebejer to play in the premiere of his extraordinary work, Boulevard. This difficult play requires a director as perceptive as Ebejer himself. Antoinette took beautifully to Ebejer's direction and played stylishly against Maurice Tanti Burlo' and the rest of us.

She and Victor were in the small group that set up the Atturi Theatre Group in 1973 and Antoinette was in the cast of that remarkable company in its production of a Maltese version of Pirandello's Sei Personaggi in cerca d'Autore (directed by Lino Farrugia) in April that year. She went on to play many parts very powerfully in Atturi's monthly productions at the Phoenicia Playhouse.

I remember with nostalgia her performance as Nina in Ethel Farrugia's outstandingly elegant production of Chekhov's The Seagull, in which I played Trigorin, and as Yeliena in the same author's Iz-Ziju Vanja, directed by Joe Friggieri, where this time it was I as Vanja who was disastrously in love with her.

I remember above all her Tina, mousy but clever and scheming, in Albert Marshall's very successful production of The Aspern Papers where again I was fortunate to play opposite her and the redoubtable Karmen Azzopardi. I must not forget to mention her vulnerable Thea in another production where we were both in the cast, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in which it was a great pleasure for us all to be directed by the great Pakistani actor Zia Mohyeddin.

Antoinette played beautifully in many a light comedy and farce such as Neil Simon's Plaza Suite and Marc Camoletti's Boeing Boeing, but again my most vivid memory is of being in the same cast as her in Feydeau's Hotel Coq d'Or, directed by her dear Victor, at the Manoel. Here and in Nigel Dennis's enjoyable adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni comedy, A Credit to the Country, Antoinette showed her mastery of comic technique.

The last time I spoke to Antoinette, on the phone, was a year or two ago when I told her of the death of an old theatrical friend of us both, James Falkland. The news saddened us, but not half as much as the news of her departure has saddened her many friends now. She was not only a very fine actress but also a very fine person. Her family's loss is a great one, and my heart goes out to Victor especially, but there must be many who will think of her gentle smile and kind speech, now silent, with sorrow in their hearts.