The double page spread in Times of Malta last Friday showing works by Maltese architect and artist Richard England hit me in the eye. There they were, England’s proposals for a theatre on the site of the Royal Opera House, which, I am sure, must have struck a chord in the heart of all those who, like me, feel that the people of Malta have been short-changed by the makeshift concoction that I am convinced world-renowned architect Renzo Piano would not readily put his name to.
What Valletta and Malta need is a smaller version of London’s Southbank
Whether Piano knows or cares whether the open space with vile green seats that, in Valletta’s prime site, does not fill any of the cultural and infrastructural lacunae that Valletta, soon to be European Capital of Culture, needs, is another matter.
Maybe he did not know that the people of Malta have been lobbying, protesting and, yes, clamouring for seven decades to have a replacement of what was considered to be the supreme temple of the arts, a superb neoclassical building that was tragically irreversibly damaged by enemy action in 1942.
For the best part of the 20th century, this bombsite slapped us in the face every time we entered Valletta. Meanwhile, after frenetic post-war attempts to keep opera alive at the Radio City and the Orpheum, the genre spiralled into a long painful decline.
Today, opera is reduced to one operatic production at the Manoel Theatre and one each from the Gozitan band clubs.
There was a time when summer open-air opera on Manoel Island or Mdina Square was a regular feature but even this was discontinued.
The popularity of opera is at its nadir; only in Malta, of course, as opera houses all over the world were and still are churning them out while contemporary composers like Glass, Ades, Adams and Andreissen are still creating new operatic works with alacrity and, above all, success.
This Malta discrepancy is due to a number of factors, chief among which is because there has and is an ongoing whispering campaign that opera is elitist. While certainly not intellectually elite, opera is on the expensive side to produce, especially in a place like Malta that is not geared to have it on an ongoing basis and must produce each opera from scratch on a tabula rasa as for the last seven decades opera has been homeless.
It would, I feel, be flogging a dead horse to even contemplate the erection of an opera house in the true sense of it. However, I still strongly feel that the green seated open space could be modified, if not by Piano, by some renowned son of Malta, like England. This site can be used as an auditorium for our Malta Philharmonic, which, for various reasons, has been ‘homeless’ for almost two decades.
With Valletta 18 on the horizon it is of paramount importance that great care and attention is given to the city’s infrastructure and that each and every decision taken is evaluated thoroughly, especially with regard to its impact on future generations.
If we look at V18 dispassionately we can either sit on our laurels and rely on what our forefathers have left us or take a proactive view. If Valletta is going to remain looking permanently backwards culturally, mired in its comfort zones of Mattia Preti and Caravaggio like the two hippotami in the proverbial song, then we may as well give up on ever being taken seriously as a contemporary cultural destination. If we are to regard Valletta as a living city, the infrastructural requirements have to be addressed and urgently too.
The auditorium is a must. The Manoel Theatre is an 18th century court theatre and symphonic music performed there is most times like trying to stuff an elephant in a matchbox.
The national collection of art is destined to move to its original home in Auberge d‘Italie but what about modern and contemporary? And then what about a fully-functioning dramatic theatre?
Most important of all, how can we expect the overall literacy of the public to improve if the public library is marooned in that ill-placed oubliette in Beltissebħ instead of being centrally accessible not to mention being brought up to contemporary benchmarks.
I am sure that many of you have already guessed that what Valletta and Malta need is a smaller version of London’s Southbank. The perfect place for this is on the site of the MCP car park.
Only a couple of weeks ago there were artists’ impressions of it when ‘closed’, finally after all these years of being a blot on the landscape; a carbuncle that we had long given up on removing.
This site, straddling the open isthmus between Valletta and Floriana, would be a perfect location for the museums, the auditorium the theatre and the library built as a complex. The openness of the site would ensure that anything iconic would complement the baroque character of Valletta and Floriana and would not cramp their style.
Imagine a sculptural building looking something like Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao equally visible against a dramatic skyline from Sliema and from the Three Cities!
We have always been a resourceful and creative race with more than its fair share of talented and artistic people who, over the centuries, have contributed to making Malta the unique place that it is.
Let us all make the supreme effort to make these infrastructural requirements possible in time for V18 for I fear that if we do not do so now we would have missed the bus forever.