Old opera house remnants scattered across the island

A catalogue of ruins of the old opera house and their location has been compiled but unless the pieces in private hands are revealed the list cannot be exhaustive.

The inventory is an exercise to return some of the remains to their original home, which is being regenerated by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

All the located pieces are in public places, government schools and colleges, or exhibited in museums but they only constitute the tip of the iceberg.

"The parts found only make up a small percentage of the whole building and, therefore, the quantity remains very limited. Unless the pieces held in private hands are revealed, they remain untraceable and the list cannot be exhaustive," the Investments Ministry said.

No drive has as yet been embarked on to retrieve them or encourage individuals to bring them back to their rightful spot.

The inventory includes busts, dispersed around a variety of locations including the President's residence and gardens in San Anton, where decorated keystones also belong to the old opera house.

Column bases and segments of Corinthian capitals can be found in the Msida Junior Lyceum while Santa Lucia's war memorial, the Luqa bypass, the Marsa Sports Ground and Kalkara's Fort Rinella are also temporary homes for the remnants of the opera house.

Parts of the site, built in 1866 and bombed in 1942, are also showcased in the War Museum in Valletta and at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology.

The cataloguing exercise was conducted by the Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation as part of the research support it is providing the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, entrusted with the capital project. It requested an inventory of the existing elements that could be used for the reconstruction of part of the building.

The plan is to convert the old opera house site into an open-air theatre, incorporating the bombed ruins. A roofless, 1,200-seat theatre is being envisaged, enhanced by state-of-the-art technology to give it the scenographic and acoustic properties expected from a contemporary theatre.

"We keep the soul of the opera house so we don't steal that noble function that is cultural...," Mr Piano said, predicting it would be "one of the most magical places in the Mediterranean..."

His intention is to introduce more elements over the present ruins.

It was too early to say how much of the ruins would be used and how they would be used, the ministry said.

"Details of how and whether these elements will be used in the restoration of the ruins will be known once the schematic drawings are developed into full and detailed designs.

"Of course, it is not possible to use several of these elements because they come from higher levels of the former building and nothing of what used to hold them up there has been found," the ministry said.