About
Historic venues. Maltese stories. Live music and theatre — experienced where the stories belong.
The producer
Valletta Resounds is a series of immersive music and theatre productions staged in some of Valletta’s most storied venues, performed by exceptional Maltese talent and produced by Udjenza.
Where the venue becomes part of the story
The premise is simple: some rooms in Valletta carry their own story, and experiencing a performance inside them offers something a traditional theatre cannot.
The Oratory at St John’s Co-Cathedral is home to The Beheading of St John the Baptist — the only painting Caravaggio ever signed — and is intrinsically linked to Caravaggio’s dramatic time in Malta and the Knights of St John.
On Strait Street, the legendary Sailors’ Paradise served the Mediterranean fleet for a century and never stopped being a bar. Today, its walls provide the setting for stories inspired by the people, music and colourful history of Valletta’s famous entertainment district.
Immersive performances rooted in Valletta
The Caravaggio Experience premiered in 2023 and passed its 100th performance in October 2025, having welcomed more than 9,000 people — a run that is genuinely rare in Malta.
Sailors in the City Experience followed, taking the Valletta Resounds concept into the historic bars of Strait Street.
Every Valletta Resounds production brings together critically acclaimed Maltese musicians, singers and actors, with casts rotating by performance date.
The venue
The Oratory of St John's Co-Cathedral
The conventual church of the Knights of St John was completed in 1577, soon after the Great Siege, and dedicated to St John the Baptist. Designed by the Order’s military engineer, Girolamo Cassar, its austere façade reflects the sombre mood of an Order that had recently survived one of the defining sieges in Malta’s history.
Inside, that austerity gives way entirely. Over the centuries, successive Grand Masters and knights enriched the church with works by leading artists of their time, transforming its plain Mannerist interior into one of the most extraordinary Baroque spaces in Europe. The Oratory and sacristy were added in 1604.
Caravaggio in Malta
Caravaggio arrived in Malta in July 1607, having fled Rome under sentence of death after killing a man in a brawl. He was received into the Order as a Knight of Obedience in July 1608 and, during his time on the island, painted The Beheading of St John the Baptist and St Jerome Writing. Both remain in St John’s Co-Cathedral today.
His time as a Knight of St John was short-lived. Within weeks of his investiture, Caravaggio was imprisoned at Fort St Angelo and subsequently escaped from Malta before his trial. On 1 December 1608, in this very Oratory and in front of The Beheading of St John the Baptist, Caravaggio was formally expelled from the Order “like a rotten and fetid limb.”
The painting has never left the room for which it was created. It is the only work Caravaggio ever signed.
Today, this same Oratory is the setting for The Caravaggio Experience, allowing audiences to encounter Caravaggio’s masterpiece through live music and theatrical storytelling in the very room at the heart of his extraordinary story.
The venue
Sailors' Paradise
99 Strait Street, Valletta VLT 1460
Not wheelchair accessible. Access is only possible via stairs.
Strait Street — known as The Gut — was for more than a century the heart of Valletta’s nightlife. A narrow lane of music halls, bars and dance clubs, it was where sailors from the Mediterranean fleet and navies calling at the Grand Harbour came to spend their pay and their shore leave. When the British fleet withdrew in 1979, the street fell quiet, remaining so for decades.
Sailors’ Paradise is one of the historic bars that survived. Still a working bar today, it is also something of a living museum. Original artefacts line its walls, each carrying a piece of Strait Street’s history — from Chesterfield sofas and enamel advertising signs to wartime photographs and a ship’s anchor.
It is an unusually intimate setting for live theatre. There is no traditional stage: the performers move among the tables, bringing music, characters and stories into the heart of the room. Audiences experience the performance just metres from the actors, inside a bar that forms part of the very history being brought to life.
This is not a recreation of Strait Street. It is Strait Street.
On stage
Music & Performers
Valletta Resounds brings together an accomplished ensemble of Maltese musicians, singers and actors, including some of Malta’s most esteemed sopranos and instrumentalists performing on Baroque harp, Baroque violin, Baroque cello, psaltery and St John’s Co-Cathedral’s own organ.
For The Caravaggio Experience, the repertoire ranges from Baroque masters including Handel and Bach to the sacred Maltese music of Francesco Azzopardi. On Strait Street, Sailors in the City Experience moves into a different musical world, with wartime favourites including We’ll Meet Again, Roll Out the Barrel and Lili Marlene.
The cast rotates by date. Different artists perform on different dates, and the musical programme may be subject to slight changes.