A suitable theatre for opera and musicals

Peter Fenech's views on building another theatre on the opera house site have been given so much prominence (April 23) that I suspect they are the opening move in a governmental publicity exercise meant to persuade us to forget all about theatre and to think about a Parliament building on this site.

We all know that a Parliament building can be built on other sites; the idea of it being constructed inside Fort St Elmo has always sounded a good idea to me.

Dr Fenech's view is based on what he sees as the folly of building a large theatre when the demand for opera, for instance, is so small. He quotes what happened to this year's BoV opera festival at the Manoel Theatre, which was a box office disaster, as a proof of what he holds but does not mention: that surely many more than 700 people in Malta who love opera and try to see it are not quite enthusiastic about little-known works by Vaughan Williams and Milhaud, which they got this year, and might have been drawn more to The Magic Flute if the management had hired a well-known soprano to sing the part of The Queen of the Night instead of bringing over an unknown singer whose acting left a lot to be desired and whose singing passed muster without enthusing her audiences.

If this is what the future is going to be like, I would advise Bank of Valletta to withdraw its sponsorship as from next year.

Even more importantly, Dr Fenech seems to think that a new theatre on this site would be utilised merely for opera, forgetting the great following large-scale musicals have in this country as in most other countries.

A first-rate modern theatre could become the home of domestic and foreign productions that would provide classy entertainment for the upmarket tourists we wish to attract as well as providing the thousands of middle-aged and young people who pay large sums just to hear a first-rate singer perform in the open air with the opportunity to view shows that are spectacular on a large scale.

Not all of us are enamoured of the Hall of the Republic at the Mediterranean Conference Centre as a venue for theatre. Perhaps Dr Fenech should elucidate what he meant when he said: "It will come" when asked about alternatives to the theatre spaces we now have. Will this take the form of a reinvention of the Hall of the Republic? What we all want are concrete plans and not mysterious hints.

The post mortem he promises is badly needed for in the shape of this year's mock opera festival, opera is truly dead.

Let us not forget, however, the opera productions that often pack the two theatres in Victoria because they have stages that can reasonably accommodate a large opera production and because the theatres give people what they want, not what others think they want.