What thoughts did you convey last Thursday when you were the main speaker during the presentation by President George Abela of the prestigious gold medal awarded by the Society for Arts, Manufacture and Commerce to Miriam Gauci for her musical achievements?

I began by recalling the reaction of Jamie James, a media oracle who delivered a critical post-mortem, as well as one of the prophetic insights he occasionally adds to his reviews, in the New York Times of June 4, 1995, after he had heard Miriam Gauci in the role of Manon: “Is the future of the vocal world to come from places like Malta?

“It is manifestly not coming from the Western European countries that were formerly the sources of great voices. These days we have to take the talent where we can find it.”

James sounds as surprised at hearing a Maltese soprano with “a voice as bracing as the sea” as those Jews who were astounded that a prophet like Jesus should have come from the backwater of Nazareth. The American musical critic had previously noted that Malta was widely known for its crenellated bastions and war records, but not for great singers.

However, he seemed to acknowledge there was a value in the Latin timbre of a voice, with a whiff and a tang of the Mediterranean sea in it, if it was Italian opera that it was to be heard in.

Such a voice had a comparative advantage over those imported from Korea and Japan and elsewhere in the Far East who were flourishing in the opera theatres of the West as abundantly as vegetation in a jungle.

These admittedly beautiful voices lacked the “Puccinian bloom” that Gauci unmistakably was.

Yet the most general remark I heard from the delighted audience at the ceremony was that they had no idea of the range and calibre of the performances that Gauci had given in the most renowned opera houses of the world and of which short snippets on videos obtained in various (usually odd) ways were projected.

I happened to be teaching in Milan when Gauci first came on scholarship to the Scala. I was in Paris on several occasions when she was singing at the Bastille.

I sometimes travelled especially to hear her in places like the Alvar Aalto Theatre in Essen, in Hilsdorf’s very controversial but immensely thrilling version of Verdi’s Don Carlo.

Yet even I was surprised by the number and magnificence of performances Gauci had given of which I did not have an inkling, and I was enchanted by the flashes of them given us for the first time at the Casinò Maltese.

Since James wrote, Joseph Calleja has appeared like a meteor on the world scene.

The lovely-voiced Clare Debono has with good intuition specialised in Baroque music (as well as emulating Gauci in Mozart).

Having been handpicked by the supreme guru in this area, William Christie, she has toured Europe and America with his Le Jardin des Voix, performing in operas by such early masters as Monteverdi and Lully, as well as Purcell with Les Arts Florissants.

There is indeed a shoal of other singers still up to now heard almost exclusively in Malta and Gozo with the almost inevitable limitations that this imposes.

But last Thursday the universal lament was about the fact that a world star like Gauci was associated with Malta as her birthplace and not as the location where to go to hear and see her perform.

Which is the characteristic which impressed you most in Gauci’s performances?

Not one, but three. The first is the exceptional elegance and smoothness of her transitions between forte and pianissimo, with her absolute control of vocal volume, and between high and low in pitch.

The second is the way in which her acting is of a piece with her singing.

Today, gone is the time when people understood the joke: what is the difference between a soprano and a baby elephant? – Eleven pounds.

A total performance is expected, but still rare are those singers who appear on the stage like Gauci as if they had been trained by Stanislavsky himself.

The third is unwavering consistency in standards of performance.

In this regard, the old joke is still viable: what is the difference between a soprano and a terrorist? – You can negotiate with the latter.

Riccardo Muti himself told me not even he could persuade Gauci to sing anything that she did not herself personally feel she was ready for at the time.

And I got the impression that never had anybody else reacted that way to a Muti proposal.

I acknowledge that the first of these characteristics was brought to my attention by Maestro Claudio Abbado, and the second by both Robert Wilson and Robert Carson (who directed Gauci in productions of Butterfly and Manon respectively).

Did you emerge from Thursday’s event with an even greater conviction of the need for a proper theatre on the Opera House site?

Definitely yes.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.