|
 Hilda,
daughter of John Tabone and Cettina nee Psaila, was
born in Vittoriosa on 20th September 1932,. She was
married on Sept. 1962 to Carmel (later Dr) Mallia
and had twins: Mario and John.
She was educated at government schools and at the
Sacred Heart.
When she finished her student years, she was
employed as an accountant with Simonds Farsons Cisk.
After hearing Hilda singing, at one of the parties
organized on Christmas 1950 by this factory,
Marchioness Scicluna and the factory’s director Mr
Farrugia encouraged her to take up singing as an
artistic occupation.
The first persons who helped her on the threshold of
her singing career were Mro Anton Muscat Azzopardi,
soprano Bice Ciappare and Mro Joseph Abela Scolaro.
The first time she appeared as a soloist was on 9th
October 1951 in a concert organized by the Malta
Industry and Sports at the Hotel Phoenicia.
Hilda sang both hymns and operatic excerpts with
almost all the Band Clubs in Malta, and in concerts
organized by institutions, charitable or otherwise,
as witness the innumerable programmes published by
those same institutions.
She appeared for the first time on TV in 1965.
In 1969 she sung the title role in the operetta
La Stella di Barberia composed by Mro Giuseppe
Giardini Vella, who directed it at the Astra, Rabat,
Gozo. With the same Astra she sang operatic excerpts
on various other occasions.
The most important episodes in her singing career
were those on the occasion of Saint Paul’s
Centenary(20.7.60), when she sang both with La
Vallette Band “Id-Dawl mit-Tempesta” written
by Dun Frans Camilleri and put to music by Mro J.
Camilleri, and, having finished that, she mounted
the opposite podium to sing with the King’s Own Band
“An Ode to Saint Paul”, lyric by Dun Karm,
music by Mro J. Magri..These two highly esteemed
maestros directed themselves their respective band.
The triumph of her singing career occurred when she
sang the premières and repetitions of Carmelo Pace’s
Caterina Desguanez (1965) (libretto by Ivo
Muscat Azzopardi), I Matiri (1967) and
Angelica (1973) (both librettos by V.M.
Pellegrini).
One may also add that she willingly sang on various
occasions without asking any honorarium - outrightly
meagre in those times - in charity concerts and
religious occasions.
In 1971, accompanying her husband on his six-month
scholarship in France, she sang at various events
such as at the gatherings of the Association
Culturelle et Amicale des Familles d’Outre Mer
(10.1.71), at the Association Culturelle et Amicale
des Français d’Asie en France (28.3.71) and at the
Esperanto Congress of the Sat-Amikaro of
Paris.
Her repertoire included: Aida, Andrea Chenier,
Cavalleria Rusticana, Il Trovtore, La Bohème, La
Forza del Destrino, La Traviata, La Gioconda, Madame
Butterfly, Othello, Tosca, Turandot, Un ballo in
Maschera.
In her spare time she used to find solace in sewing,
embroidering and painting. But her attention was
first and foremost to her family.
In 1971 in La Parizano, a booklet of the
international Esperanto organization Sat-Amikaro
of Paris, the editor, Mr G. Lheritier, wrote about
her: ”we had the honour of appreciating soprano
Mallia Tabone’s superb voice, which needed a bigger
space. She sang with adroitness two excerpts from
Norma and Tosca.”
Writing to Hilda on 3rd March ’71 about the first
above mentioned performance, Mme S. Gueydon de
Dives, general secretary of the above mentioned
ACAFOM, mentioned:’’l’éclat et le rayonnement de
cette soirée a été fortement rehaussés par la
qualité artistique et musicale de votre voix et du
répertoire qui furent appréciés de tous..’’ In the
same letter Mme de Dives mentioned a journalist from
Cameroon who was present that evening, who qualified
Hilda’s voice as ‘’fine et expérimentée.’’
After her return to Malta from Paris with her
husband, she received a letter from Mme Giselle
Vaillant, teacher at the Paris Conservatoire,
praising her “voix magnifique.”
In 1974, the World Who’s Who of Women awarded her
the diploma For Distinguished Achievement, and
included her in its directory The World Who’s Who
of Women.
She died at her home in Old Governor’s Palace
Street, Vittoriosa, on 5th Feb. 1978 and was buried
in the family grave at the Resurrection Cemetery,
Qormi.
A street in Vittoriosa and a school in Mtarfa were
named after her. The only grudge her family still
hold is that in both cases the relative government
institutions named those places after ‘’Hilda
Tabone’’ without previously consulting her family.
From the time she married, she always made it a
point for her surname to appear as ‘’Mallia
Tabone’’, since she thought she had to keep ‘Tabone’
as she was already well known by that surname. And
although those institutions were later notified with
their error, nothing has been changed. For me that
is simply called arrogance.
For appreciations and criticisms of Hilda’a
performances, one may dive deep into the pages of
the newspapers, both in Maltese and English that
appeared after each performance, so as to have a
full assessment, sincere or biased, of her powerful
dramatic soprano’s voice which musical and opera
lovers, critics and pseudo-critics, certainly
enjoyed. |
