Debate continues on Piano's City Gate plans (6)

Inevitably the papers have been full of letters commenting on the new plans by Renzo Piano for the main entrance into Valletta and the restoration of the opera house ruins. Although I feel I am not qualified to approve or criticise the designs from a technical point of view, as a layperson I am impressed and find the blending of old and new imaginative and exciting. My quarrel is not with the architect or his design but with the brief he was given.

The facts are:

1. We are in desperate need of an all-weather theatre designed especially for dance/opera/drama productions. The Manoel Theatre is too small, the MCC is a conference centre and not a real theatre, as any producer will confirm, St James Cavalier can only be used for the smallest most intimate productions, and never for dance, or opera, or musicals.

2. Valletta is our capital city and deserves a theatre capable of hosting such productions. It is not a question of opera not being "financially viable", or dance attracting too small an audience; most opera houses run at a loss and are subsidised by their governments because their productions are considered a valuable part of their country's cultural identity. How can we ever learn to appreciate opera and dance if we are rarely exposed to them? Apart from this, commercial productions would also be organised that would, in fact, make money.

3. For historical reasons many of us are sentimentally attached to the old Opera House and have been waiting for it to be recuscitated for 65 years.

Given the above I fail to understand why Mr Piano was asked to design a building for a Parliament rather than a theatre. If the original Opera House is too small, as some have claimed, then the site of the Opera House could have been extended into Freedom Square, encompassing a cultural/exhibition centre and the proposed library. Why was the idea of converting Fort St Elmo, Evans, the Examination centre, MCC, and other buildings in the vicinity never seriously considered as a venue for a new Parliament?

The best reasons for our Parliament to be housed at Fort St Elmo were published in a double page spread in this newspaper a few years ago by the then major of Valletta, Paul Borg Olivier, at present general secretary of the PN. It would be extremely interesting to reread that article now, as his intelligent arguments are even more valid today.