Manoel Theatre enters second phase of restoration

Restoration work on the proscenium arch of the Manoel Theatre and on boxes on the left hand side of the theatre starts today.

At a brief ceremony that inaugurated the second phase of the theatre's restoration yesterday evening, Manoel Theatre chairman Wilfred Kenely said that Sante Guido and his team of restorers, who had been entrusted with the first phase of restoration that ended before the start of the theatrical season last September, will also be responsible for the second phase.

Mr Kenely said that like last year, restoration work was this year starting just a few days after the last performance of the season. He said 49,000 people had visited the theatre since the first phase of restoration was completed last September. Apart from theatre audiences in the evening, many people including tourists had viewed the Manoel in the morning.

Thanking the sponsors who were acting as patrons and who were therefore making the restoration of the theatre possible, Mr Kenely said that a lift will be installed in the Manoel Theatre courtyard up to Sala Isouard while restoration works are carried out inside the theatre. He said the lift was being financed from public coffers and would be ready by September.

The government and the Manoel Theatre management were also carrying out a four-year upgrading plan that included the building of state-of-the-art rehearsal rooms behind the stage, together with new dressing rooms and other facilities, Mr Kenely said.

Explaining what the restoration of the auditorium entailed, Prof. Guido said the restoration team will, as from today, start removing layers of pollution that had accumulated along the centuries, as well as the false gold that has been applied to the gilding in past interventions.

He said the intervention made last summer to restore the 45 frontispieces on the theatre boxes involved cleaning all the layers that had been applied along the years, to bring out the original colours of the 15 landscapes and the flowers painted on the panels.

"The original gilding on the wooden panels came out beautifully after the layers were removed," he said.

The frontispieces was dismantled and work was carried out in a laboratory. This time round, restoration work has to be done on site with the help of scaffolding that will be dismantled just before the start of the next theatrical season.

Prof. Guido said the blue paint applied between the boxes will not be removed even though it is not original. "It was applied to blend with the blue seats and the seats of the theatre and since this is not a full-blown restoration of the theatre, we decided to leave it untouched," he said.

The Malta International Airport is the main sponsor of the restoration, together with the Valletta Rehabilitation Project and Din l-Art Helwa through Computime.