The Manoel and the evolution of art

It was profoundly sad to read Paul Xuereb's (April 29) and Andrew Gilmore's (May 2) letters unjustly and anachronistically bemoaning the Manoel Theatre's beautiful decision to introduce modern sensibilities into the Maltese musical scene, a decision which created an intriguing mosaic for further development and debate that would at last have placed Malta on the international cultural map.

It is outrageous for Mr Xuereb, who we sincerely hope is not the same Paul Xuereb acclaimed as the Sunday Times critic for theatre arts, to advocate that the BoV withdraw its sponsorship from the Manoel Theatre Opera Festival for the latter's brilliant and historic choice to produce the internationally acclaimed works of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Darius Milhaud respectively.

The Welshman Vaughan Williams' opera Riders to the Sea, based primarily on the Irishman J.M. Synge's play of the same name, was woven in with the Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel, and the whole production, which had met with great success in France, was conceived and brilliantly performed by Archal, a Parisian company. The English words of the libretto were magnificently and organically projected simultaneously on a large screen, in a translation by the acclaimed Maltese scholar based in Israel, Alex Borg.

This whole tapestry of international creativity, performed in one of the oldest of European theatres, in fact reflects the exciting intercultural role Malta can play in all the arts, including the operatic arts.

By bringing this extraordinary and impressive production, which incidentally was warmly acclaimed by the audience, the Manoel Theatre was enacting Malta's pivotal role as a modern intercultural bridge in the European scene. The second opera, Milhaud's Le Pauvre Matillot, is based on the work of Jean Cocteau, one of the seminal artists of the 20th century.

It was inventively and wittily performed in the Manoel Theatre's cafeteria, recalling perhaps Berlin of the 1920s or Paris of the 1950s.

Not only do we find it extraordinary that Mr Xuereb should have attacked the idea of performing these masterpieces, but it is a great pity that no students or lecturers from the Music Department, Theatre Studies, or the Arts faculties at the university attended, in order to debate whether the productions did justice to the authors, to discuss the "intrusion" of the Maltese language in the stage design, or to question whether the monochrome effects fairly reflected Vaughan Williams' world view.

The absence of lecturers and students is all the more strange when one notes that Vaughan Williams is on the curriculum of Music Studies at the University of Malta. When will students and others have another such golden opportunity?

Moreover, if the repertoire of the Manoel Theatre is restricted to the standard classics (in themselves entirely valid, of course), and omits equally recognised works of the 20th century, how are we to understand and carry forward the cultural and creative continuum?

If the Manoel Theatre were to negate our right to delve deeper into the operatic kaleidoscope, how would we understand those works created by contemporary Maltese artists of modernist sensibilities, such as Francis Ebejer's misunderstood classics, John Schranz's controversial theatrical productions, Immanuel Mifsud's intriguing writings, Gabriel Caruana's ceramic explosions or Alfred Chircop's philosophical abstracts, among many others?

If we are going to refuse Vaughan Williams in the Manoel, how are we going to accept the Maltese Karl Fiorini's works? If we are going to organise an Islamic fundamentalist pilgrimage against the Manoel Theatre's novel departures, how are we going to induce creativity in the arts for the next generation, who will never have had a chance to see and experience the evolution of art?