Paul Xuereb writes:
Gita was one of the most interesting and delightful people who came to settle in Malta in the late decades of the last century.
With her husband Mortimer (John to his friends), she established herself immediately as hostess of innumerable dinner and drinks parties for the many Maltese, English and other friends the Furbers made in Malta.
She made a name for herself as a witty teller of anecdotes from her career in her youth as a successful soprano in opera and, from more recent years, brought out the best of young academics, authors and composers like Charles Camilleri, whose music she greatly admired, and Francis Ebejer, introducing them to visiting friends like the academic Giovanni Pontiero, also an excellent raconteur.
Gita and her husband were both great lovers of music.
At one time, John, whose father, Douglas, had been a successful composer for the musical comedy stage, even had his own orchestra. A Mortimer Furber Conducting Prize was set up by Gita to commemorate him after he died.
In later years, Gita became an assiduous member of audiences for orchestral and chamber music as well as for vocal recitals but in her early years in Malta she mostly avoided vocal recitals and opera, feeling, at that time, that they were rarely up to her high professional standards.
I shall always remember that in her 100th year, shortly before she left us, Gita attended most of the many performances in this year’s Valletta International Baroque Festival in January and I also remember her keen critical comments on the performances in this very successful festival.
I must add that Gita had already booked a room in a London hotel and tickets for a number of promenade concerts at the Albert Hall this coming summer, as had been her yearly habit for many years.
For me, nothing could proclaim as strongly as this Gita’s great love of music and, above all, her determination to live life as fully as possible to the end.
She was a church-goer and showed her charitable and very generous nature in a number of ways. She also helped the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Gita cherished friendship and loved socialising and was never happier, even in her last years, than when she was hosting one of her parties in her handsome home in Balzan.
All who knew her testify to her ironic humour and readiness, sometimes a trifle reluctantly, to greet points of view she could not share.
Though not, I believe, a Briton by birth but certainly by citizenship, she was a great Briton in her allegiance.
I remember an occasion at a party – not hosted by her – when somebody, not a Briton, spoke disparagingly of Prince Charles. Her comment was to pour her drink on the person’s head.
Perhaps this incident sums her up best of all.
Extremely charming most of the time and a splendid hearer of other people’s tales of woe as well as good fortune, there were rare moments when the views she so strongly held burst through her normal civil restraints. It said much for her that those who felt involved in those moments never lost their respect and affection for her.