Ramona Depares

2 months ago | x2.timesofmalta.com | Ramona Depares

From a very young age, we’re socialised to view the world as being made up of “goodies” and “baddies”. When you’re a child fooling around with your friends in the playground, nobody ever wants to be the baddy. And when it comes to dressing up, everybody wants to be Luke Skywalker – not Darth Vader. This oversimplified way of viewing the world as being made up of right and wrong or good people and bad people doesn’t dissipate as we grow older.

2 months ago | x2.timesofmalta.com | Ramona Depares

The China Cultural Centre in Malta, in collaboration with the Network of International Culturalink Entities (NICE) and St Ignatius College Ħandaq Middle School, has launched Malta’s first-ever Chinese Music Club on campus. This milestone initiative introduces students to the traditional Chinese pipa, a musical instrument with over 2,000 years of history.

2 months ago | x2.timesofmalta.com | Ramona Depares

When Bernard Berenson [an American art historian] learned that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa had been stolen from the Louvre Gallery in Paris, the art critic heaved an enormous sigh of relief. Finally, he reflected, he could remove himself once and all from the dangerous influence of the work. “She had simply become an incubus,” he recalled years later, “and I was glad to be rid of her.” At long last, Berenson had freed himself from the vampiric face of the Mona Lisa.

Mar 21, 2025 | x2.timesofmalta.com | Ramona Depares

This year’s Gaulitana: A Festival of Music, now in its 18th edition, will open on 5 April 2025 with an exhibition In Harmony: 19th century Music Printing in Malta, curated by Anna Borg Cardona and Joseph Calleja. This exhibition shines a light on society in British Malta, its salon music, the composers, and the Brocktorff family who printed the music. Baron Charles Frederick de Brocktorff (1781-1850) arrived in Malta with his wife around 1810, in the early years of the British period.

Mar 20, 2025 | x2.timesofmalta.com | Ramona Depares

Fans of the video game franchise Assasin’s Creed have been pining for a game set in feudal Japan for decades. In theory, it looked like a match made in heaven. The series (which started in 2007 and has sold over 200 million copies) uses historical settings, such as ancient Greece, the Italian Renaissance or the American Revolution, to tell its fictional epic story of a battle between the Order of Assassins and the Knights Templar.