Opera House shame

With the inauguration of the Norwegian Opera House in Oslo on April 12, Malta remains one of the few, if not the only, European country without a national opera house. This should be a cause of national shame, especially when one recalls that the Royal Opera House was a vibrant operatic centre in pre-war Malta. To gauge this, one only needs to see how long it took for the latest Italian opera, Verdi, Puccini or whoever, to be staged in Malta after its Italian premiere.

The site of the Royal Opera House is also probably the only prominent bombed-out site in Europe with no prospect in sight for its re-construction.

I won't enter into the debate on whether this site should be rebuilt to serve its original purpose or not.

However, the government needs to look into the immediate commencement of a project for the construction of a national opera house. Other possible venues are possible such as Fort St Elmo or the power-station site.

Thus, I urge the government to appoint a board of enquiry made up of competent people to look into the possibility of using any of these sites, or others which have not come to mind, for the construction of a national opera house. Such an exercise should be undertaken with an economic prospective in mind and in this context, the thousands of well-off cruise liner visitors who alight in Grand Harbour provide a hitherto untapped market. My view is that the construction of a national opera house is not only necessary for the national psyche but also makes economic sense in an increasingly competitive scenario.

As the director of Norwegian Opera and Ballet, Bjoern Simonsen put it, the building would "change the way the world sees us, and the way we see ourselves". The building of a national opera house would signify to the world that our nation has come of age and that we value culture as much as we do other important aspects of the infrastructure, whether physical or social, of this nation.