I write with a deep sense of melancholia and disillusion. After reading Lou Bondì's article Rocking The Opera House I am still at a loss what opera house Mr Bondì is intending to rock. There is no such building. There has not been one since 1942! I am also perplexed by his line of reasoning. Nobody said that the ex opera house site should be replaced by another opera house exclusively but by a multipurpose building that can take a variety of audiovisual art forms of which opera is just one.

Mr Bondì based his argument on the Manoel chairman's which has already been rubbished by people more expert than I. There are far more than a mere 700 people who would patronise ballet, symphonic music and opera.

The reason why I mention these three in particular is because we do not have an appropriate place to put up any of them effectively. The 700 statistic was based on the attendance of this year's BOV Opera Festival which was one of the most lacklustre I have ever sat through.

So please before you start asking embarrassing questions redefine that statistic. People are upset because the chairman of the Manoel Theatre, our National Theatre, is taking such an unprecedented defeatist stance which logically implies that the festival is indeed doomed and, ergo, so is opera in Malta.

Maybe being chairman of both the National Theatre and the MCC is taking its toll. Is this mediocrity and defeatism what we have striven so hard for? Is this why we were bamboozled into voting Yes five years ago?

Does this philistinism reflect today's mainstream European culture? I am appalled. That is unless this is all sour grapes because the PN suggestion to site Parliament instead of the Opera House was not exactly popular.

What I found particularly distressing about Mr Bondì's opinion piece is that he does not give a tinker's toss about opera, which he implies is elitist.

He also calls opera lovers like me, who omnivorously love most forms of music, including Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd thank you, a gaggle of fuddy-duddies sipping tea in musty Valletta drawing rooms.

That image, I am afraid, Mr Bondì, is quite beyond the pale and is reserved exclusively to KZT's paintings and nobody is allowed to plagiarise my intellectual property, not even you! There is a time and a place for everything. My father always maintained that to be a true gentleman one can drink beer with the gardener and champagne with the king and enjoy both.

This is what the queens of England and Denmark are doing by attending rock concerts, etc and I try to follow that maxim too; albeit in reverse.

I would therefore ask you to spend some time watching Divertimezzo on Mezzo around lunchtime and you will see that in civilised countries the average age of both the performers and the members of the audience is no more than 30. The standard is spellbindingly high.

Now Mr Bondì suggests that opera aficionados should "catch a plane" just like Mr Bondì himself whenever he wants to attend a concert that is not realisable in Malta. I can assure you that many opera lovers have done so for years and years and will go on doing so whether the opera house is rebuilt or not and whether the BOV Opera festival is resumed or not.

This "catch a plane" suggestion is just as warped as Marie Antoinette's when she said that if they, the populace, do not have bread "they can always eat cake"! I sincerely hope that this anti-cultural attitude is Mr Bondì's alone and that it is not shared by either the Prime Minister or his Cabinet.

It is tantamount to rubbing salt on an open wound and is even more disconcerting when someone so indelibly associated with the PN as Mr Bondì opens his mouth to spit it out. How right wing can one get?

I will have one parting shot regarding what Mr Bondì said about taxpayers' money. Since when has culture been considered a waste of money?

Only in Malta; where the only cultural station, Radju Bronja, was axed because of "financial considerations". Shame!

The horrendously "vast" sum of €90,000 that was lost, probably needlessly, by the Manoel to produce three very questionable operas is commensurately a mere bagatelle of Lm38,637.

This is nothing compared to the vast sums we hapless citizens are collectively loaning to Enemalta every time we are press ganged into paying an "estimated" bill. I am, Mr Bondì, very far from being humbled by the sum; very far indeed. Not only has our bread ration been curtailed but soon our circuses will disappear too, transforming us into a nation of uncultured ignoramuses and clodhoppers.

kzt@onvol.net