Only a person from Valletta can appreciate what the opera house’s rebuilding means to us. Lawrence Gonzi spent at best a couple of years of his childhood in Valletta.

The late and lamented Guido de Marco spent his childhood and boyhood in this city, until bombing evicted his entire family elsewhere.

I was born, bred and lived in Valletta for 40 years and know what the opera house is all about. People who are not citizens of Valletta couldn’t give two hoots about it. But the opera house matters a great deal.

Our government has, I fear, given Renzo Piano the wrong brief, deciding a priori that a rebuilt opera house was not on. Prof. Piano came up with the ingenious solution of a roofless theatre, enclosed in glass or plexiglass, for us to sweat or to freeze in.

The Valletta local council was not consulted on this project. Prominent persons like tenor Joseph Calleja and Fr Peter Serracino Inglott and many others are all for a rebuilt theatre but were sidelined. And our government bulldozes on, sticking blindly to Prof. Piano’s incomplete plans: with slit City Gate, an unnecessary new Parliament building and a roofless theatre.

This government project will go down in history as yet another unfinished symphony. And this issue will not go away.

As for the new opera house’s upkeep, how do the Gozitans of La Stella Band Club manage? They should have closed down ages ago if performances were registering a loss repeatedly. The Mediterranean Conference Centre was intended as a centre for conferences, not theatre.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. No will, no way.

The government should reconsider its plans urgently and admit that it has made a mistake. Or else, an altered project will be completed after the next general election.