Nicolette Zammit Lupi thinks that the music of The Beatles and Pink Floyd is "low culture". Astrid Vella does not even know where Elton John performed when he was here. Yet she is demanding a new theatre for the 27 Maltese ballet schools to perform on, 27 Maltese answers to the Bolshoi (May 13). And Kenneth Zammit Tabona claims special rights to public funds for opera because he voted for Malta's EU membership (May 12).

Oh dear. With friends like these, operatic music and ballet in Malta do not need enemies. The debate over public funding of cultural events and buildings to house them is too important to be allowed to flounder about at this level. Allow me to add a couple of points to what I already wrote (May 8).

In the absence of a well-thought out public policy guiding the proportional allocation of funds to the arts, it is impossible to have a rational discussion on the matter. Let me illustrate. For the past three years, the Malta Jazz Festival was farmed out to NnG Promotions who received practically no public funding and had to try to make ends meet by diversifying the musical bill. This year, the festival will again feature jazz. Lo and behold, it is going to be underwritten by the government. Why? Can the minister responsible explain why public funds go to jazz, opera and classical music but not to rock or blues or any other specialised musical genre? Another example. Should we keep flushing €100,000 down the Eurovision toilet while Maltese artists take personal loans to record a CD?

An enlightened public policy for arts funding cannot be excised from the political process. At issue here is the crucial and delicate balance between artistic expressions which taxpayers expect their money to be spent on and niche ones which are financially unsustainable. Ignoring one at the expense of the other leads to political elitism and populism respectively.

Some Maltese opera and classical music fans commit a perverse version of the first sort of mistake. Let me call it faux elitism. They speak in Orwellian terms: their tastes are more equal than those of others. Their enjoyment is good for the nation, you see. The rest of us should resign ourselves to eating musical cake.

Artistic elitism - as opposed to political - is not a sin. Indeed, the problem with the local opera crowd is that they are not sufficiently elitist. The moment the music strays away from the populist top of the pops arias, audiences are lost at sea. That is why my poor friend Joseph Calleja will soon be singing Funiculì Funiculà and You'll Never Walk Alone here instead of the sophisticated repertoire he belts out at the New York Met to raptured audiences.

Serious opera fans, like serious rock fans, know that because of economies of scale and the absence of a critical mass of knowledgeable listeners, the local market cannot sustain the really good stuff. The last decent rock concert in Malta was Robert Plant's two years ago.

Assuming that the government will go ahead with the building of the Royal Opera House site, there is the second key issue to be addressed: What use should it be put to? Until recently, the opera brigade were not only clamouring for an opera house but for a replica of the Barry building. Thankfully, most have moved on. The issue now is whether to build what is being billed a "multi-functional theatre".

If I had to champion my own musical tastes, I should be joining the ranks of the operatic ultras in calling for such an option. A 3,000- seat capacity theatre would entice local promoters to take a chance on a wider range of rock bands.

But it would be frightfully naïve to rush. It still has to be seen whether Renzo Piano will be able to fit in a theatre with such a capacity, and with a Parliament on top of it to boot. Having just been to a magnificent Jackson Browne concert in Rome staged at the equally magnificent Piano-designed Auditorium, I am keeping an open mind. A theatre with a seat capacity much less than 3,000 would mean that the Mediterranean Conference Centre - which is already in the red - would have to be locked up and the key thrown in the Grand Harbour. Even this should be a consideration.

Most importantly, no opera buff has done even a back of the envelope calculation on the technical specifications of a "multifunctional theatre" and its financial feasibility. Ironically, the most devastating critic of such a theatre on the Royal Opera site is Richard Divall. He teaches at the School of Music, University of Melbourne, is a conductor, musicologist, former music director of the Victorian State Opera and principal resident conductor of the Australian Opera.

"There is simply too little ground space on the proposed site to accommodate the stage areas, wing space, soloist, chorus and orchestra dressing rooms, orchestra pit, front of house, administrative offices and the minimum of 1,500 seats required to make an opera venue financially viable ... In addition, I would caution against the solution of a multi-purpose concert hall/opera-ballet venue as the success rate of this sort of complex is not good, particularly in the areas of acoustics and staging facilities." (May 14).

In other words, if the MCC is a white elephant, with a new "multi-functional theatre" we might possibly end up with its mother, plagued with the same problems. It will only be bigger, and sink us deeper in the red. These are the critical technical and financial issues which have to be resolved before forming an opinion about building any sort of theatre, let alone crusading for it.

We are talking about the best use of taxpayers' money; what is needed is rational discussion, not the hysterics of the last act of Tosca.