I always wanted to see Paul McCartney in concert before he keeled over. Seeing him in Malta was not an option. The euros simply did not add up: his fee would be too high for a sane local promoter to risk bringing him over. So I went to see him at the O2 in London. Following the first bars of Hey Jude, I could have died a happy man.

Faced with a parallel situation, a gaggle of vociferous Maltese opera fans are calling for a different route to satisfy their musical tastes. They expect, nay, demand, that they hear their music at whatever cost. As long as that cost is borne by others.

Let's cut to the chase. Opera productions in Malta lose oodles of money.

The last edition of the BOV Opera Festival ended up with €90,000 in the red. There is another equally perturbing reality check. Opera goers in our midst number no more than 700 and even they are not showing up in droves.

Opera appears to be more sustainable in the two Gozitan theatres, owned by different band clubs. But there is a reason. They rely heavily on their members' voluntary work. Once this support thins out, as it is bound to in this day and age, Gozitan opera productions will become a thing of the past.

Rather than be humbled by this bleak scenario, Maltese opera goers have decided to be belligerent. As tens of thousands of taxpayer euros burn between one aria and another, they issued two decrees. Taxpayers should subsidise their musical tastes even more. And, even more brazenly, taxpayers should buy them a rather expensive toy, a new opera house.

What these decrees amount to is simple: the hoovering up of vast amounts of taxpayers' money to subsidise the musical tastes of 700 people. This is nothing less than extortion masquerading as cultural enlightenment. Taxpayers who are uninterested in opera have no divine obligation to fund the tastes of 700 people. If opera is not financially feasible in Malta, take a plane.

I can already hear the protests of those who still argue that public funds should be used to support "high" culture while "low"culture, like rock music, is best left to the vagaries of the plebeian market. To these tiresome men and women still sipping their tea in a musty Valletta piano nobile circa 1950, I suggest that they look north. They will see Queen Elisabeth II celebrating her jubilee with a rock concert on her palace grounds, the Queen of Sweden awarding the Polar Music Prize - music's equivalent of the Nobel Prize - to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and the University of Liverpool offering an entire degree in the study of Beatles music.

This is not a diatribe against opera or its fans. It is a call for a sense of perspective amidst the irrational shrillness of the opera brigade's coda. Certain niche art forms, including opera, do deserve some sort of public support. But this should be granted only after certain questions are prudently and unequivocally answered. What exactly is the capital and recurrent expenditure presently being demanded by opera fans as of right? Is the amount socially just, given that the maximum number of beneficiaries is 700 people? If it is allotted, will equity with respect to other specialised art forms be honoured? Should opera lovers, like aficionados of other niche art forms, be expected to travel and pay their own way to enjoy their music?

Now I'm off to pack my bags to go to Rome for a Jackson Browne concert, two hours of Californian soft rock at its dark best. Can you imagine me expecting opera lovers to pay for me to hear him sing "Take it easy" under a pale Roman moon? Of course not. So why should I pay for them to hear a has-been Italian tenor sing Verdi? And to pay for the theatre he sings in to boot.

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