Will it or won't it?

The Renzo Piano project will happen and not a moment too soon. At long last one of the many blots that successive governments have imposed upon us, like those avenues that destroyed village cores in the 1960s and the law courts, not to mention the qassata that is City Gate, will be transformed into what promises to be an architectural marvel by an internationally-renowned architect whose work is not only respected but admired the world over. To be quite frank, I will be relieved to see that abomination of a gate go the way of its hapless predecessors. The entire area is an embarrassment and has degenerated into something cheap and tawdry that mars the entrance into our capital. The entire project will, we are told, also include the opera house ruins that have been earmarked to house Parliament and an unspecified cultural centre.

Rebuilding the opera house as it was would be the height of folly, a pastiche. The reasons are that the opera house as it was had many shortcomings, namely its acoustics and its size that does not allow room for stage-management manoeuvring. Also, its remains had been deposited in some field near the Addolorata Cemetery as "numbered stones" and, as we all know, these wonderful exemplars of Maltese stonemasonry have been dwindling slowly into the night!

A more cogent reason is that, economically, opera simply does not work in Malta, especially in our financially-fraught situation. It is prohibitively expensive to put up and there would never be enough performances of each production to remotely break even. It is tantamount to a beggar insisting on eating smoked salmon and caviar.

I feel that for too, too long we have been taken for a ride by successive governments as to what was going to happen with this carbuncle on the Valletta townscape. Now that there finally seems to be a firm decision to do something about it, instead of a cultural use for it, of which there is a multitude, the site will be used for something else.

We may go on dreaming of proper concert halls or museums of modern art till we are blue in the face. We have been assured that Fort St Elmo will rise like a phoenix and provide space and scope for all these things to be realised but to date the specifics are missing. We need to know more. Citing Berlin as an example; Norman Foster created his glass dome within the still erect 19th century Reichstag that had been partially burnt in 1933. The absence of anything but ruins makes that impossible to emulate here. Long before the Reichstag was revitalised in the 1990s the West Berliners had that wonderful Domus Aurea of a concert hall, a tribute to the grandiose Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, built within a couple of metres of the wall. This is a question of priorities. The remodelled Gemeldegalerie is yet another example of how in civilised countries Art with a capital A takes priority over hard politics as it is their firm belief that it is the politics of art that is a far more powerful tool with which to make one's permanent mark in history.

For the last 60 years none of our successive governments have got down to creating something that could be classified as a work of art; quite the opposite, in fact. There has been a fair amount of restoration, true, which is admirable, but no actual creation of anything to be proud of.

The Piano Project promises to raise Malta out of its cultural mediocrity which is precisely why I strongly believe that the opera house site should be designated as a cultural centre; whether a museum of modern art, which will house the works of defunct 19th and 20th century artists, or a proper concert hall for our beautifully-evolving orchestra, something on the lines of that spectacular Festvielhaus on Lake Luzerne designed by Jean Nouvelle.

Naturally, this is all wishful thinking as, using the very valid excuse that Parliament should be moved out of the Palace, it has been deemed right, fitting and correct to designate the site as Malta's first Parliament building when Fort St Elmo along with the hideous Evans Laboratory could instead easily be transformed into Parliament with its appurtenances and outbuildings, plus parking facilities all incorporated homogenously within the fort's massive ramparts. This is something that should be given due consideration.

I would infinitely prefer being told about the entire project for Valletta incorporating the cultural centres and even hotels that it so badly needs rather than one that merely stops at Parliament. A plan which can be realised concurrently in order to ensure that it is not only our nation's considerable political achievements that should be lauded by being rehoused but also its artistic ones.

kzt@onvol.net