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Professor Anthony Aquilina’s translation from French into Maltese of Eugène Ionesco’s La Cantatrice Chauve / Il-Primadonna Fartasa has just been published by Teatru Malta.

This masterpiece of the theatre of the absurd, billed as an anti-play, was the first to be written by the playwright between 1948 and 1949 and performed in Paris in 1950 under the direction of Nicolas Bataille. The Maltese version by Aquilina forms part of a 400 page volume made up of three plays under the title, 'Tliet Xogħlijiet ta’ Eugène Ionesco – Il-Primadonna Fartasa • Il-Lezzjoni • Rinoċeronti', and is edited by Dr Marco Galea who teaches Theatre Studies at the University of Malta.

Il-Primadonna Fartasa is considered as the first absurd play of ‘the new French theatre’ of the fifties. It was in fact written quite by accident, while Ionesco was trying to learn English: the nonsensical flat statements of undeniable facts in his teach yourself course  (L’Anglais sans Peine, of the Assimil method) set him off sketching a ‘tragedy of language’ which would illustrate the extreme difficulty of communicating with words.

The title of the play was also found by accident during rehearsals when the actor, playing the part of the fire chief, mistook institutrice blonde and instead uttered cantatrice chauve. Ionesco, present for the rehearsal, immediately changed the title he had been considering up till then, L’Anglais sans Peine or L’Heure Anglaise to La Cantatrice Chauve / Il-Primadonna Fartasa.