A spectacular show featuring some of Malta’s best talent and speeches by Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat yesterday kicked off the 2015 CHOGM Summit. The meeting, for which over 50 Commonwealth Heads of Government and other representatives have travelled to Malta, ends today.

The elaborate opening ceremony kicked off shortly after 10am at the Mediterranean Conference Centre. Dignitaries were welcomed by Dr Muscat and his wife Michelle, the outgoing Commonwealth Secretary General, Kamalesh Sharma and outgoing Chairperson Maithripala Sirisena.

These included Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Austrialian PM Malcolm Turnbull.

The ceremony concluded with a spectacular show featuring young and adult dancers, most of whom were wearing colourful costumes related to Malta’s history or the diversity of the Commonwealth, and some of Malta’s best known faces in music, including Tenor Joseph Calleja.

Security for the event was tight, with journalists asked to report at the media centre in St Julian’s by not later than 5.30am. DOI officials explained that this was done in order to avoid long queues at the MCC, where journalists, child ushers and performers had to go through a single-lane security check.

Officials might have overestimated the time such checks would need, and several guests were already sitting in their chairs two hours before the ceremony started. Speaker Anglu Farrugia was among them, and was pictured in his seat at 7.30am when the event started at 10am.

Photos Jonathan Borg/AP