Restore the Opera House

Europe's as yet unrestored opera houses are the Teatro Garibaldi of Trapani in Sicily, bombed during World War II, and Valletta's Royal Opera House, similarly bombed during April 1942, when Malta was facing a disastrous scenario of starvation, lack of supplies and surrender.

These opera houses have remained in ruins ever since. And new venues have had to be sought for conducting stage performances of music and art. These cities have undoubtedly lost much in the process.

On the other hand, Dresden's Semper Oper in Germany was restored in 1985, no mean feat due to its mixed architectural styles. Venice's Teatro La Fenice was totally rebuilt in the early 2000s after having been deliberately set on fire. And Bari's Teatro Petruzzelli was rebuilt and reopened for operatic performances only last year, after having been the victim of suspected arson.

The government needs to choose whether to join the watchers or the doers - and become the restorer of our cherished opera house.

The Manoel Theatre is small, and totally inadequate for grand performances, though suitable for orchestral concerts. The Mediterranean Conference Centre's theatre is part of an original hospital complex, whose yard has been inadequately adapted as a theatre - the architecture there is not right. The St James' Cavalier theatre is too small for anything but lectures and small performances.

This leaves us with the option of restoring our Royal Opera House to how it was before the explosion gutted and destroyed it in 1942. To start with, its derelict site at the gateway to Valletta is a shame, a disappointing welcome to Maltese and visiting city-goers. I feel that playing bizarre games with its remaining shell won't help a bit, and won't last more than 20 years.

Great men can make big mistakes. Witness the great statesman Winston Churchill planning and overseeing the battle of the Dardanelles in 1915 as First Lord of the Admiralty. It was a disaster, with great loss of life, especially of British, Australians and New Zealanders, and the cause of a full official enquiry. Churchill managed to rehabilitate himself and his reputation in later years, and saved Britain and Malta from surrender in 1940-1942.

The Nationalist government led by George Borg Olivier went ahead to approve an Italian architect's plan for the rehashing of Kingsgate in the late 1960s-early 1970s. The result was a disaster and, as a citizen of Valletta, I am ashamed to enter our city through such an architecturally messy entrance.

Let us hope that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's gateway will be a marked improvement, not a similar degrading experiment, care of Renzo Piano. How successive governments have managed to mess up Valletta's main gateway to such an extent, through action or inaction is beyond belief. Valletta at present would deserve a medal for having the worst entrance in Europe.

It is time to salvage our honour as a people, and our opera house as a symbol of majestic architecture and artistic creativity.

The Italians have a saying: L'ottimo è il nemico del bene. If you shirk from doing what is best, you may even miss out on doing what is good.

The Americans have another saying: 'Give us something difficult, and we shall do it straight away; give us something impossible, and it will take us just a bit longer'. Brave and compelling words, which we should emulate or copy.