Oh please, no running with the hares and hunting with the hounds
The whole raison d’etre of good leadership is taking decisions that other people are unable to take themselves.
The democratic vote on whether Malta should join the European Union or be led by Alfred Sant or Lawrence Gonzi is one thing. But a democratic vote on the use of the bomb-site in Valletta? I don’t think so.
I hope the prime minister isn’t going to do that ‘try to please all the people all the time’ thing and shilly-shally on this one. Then again, I am tempted to hope – perversely – that a whacking great pointless opera house is built on that site so it will dawn on those who support the notion that the reality is somewhat different to the dream.
It is really tiresome that this whole debate has been hijacked by (1) vociferous people who like opera or think they do; (2) people who are subsumed in nostalgia for the old opera house as they remember it, failing to realise just what a hideous and inappropriate monstrosity it was; (3) others with delusions of grandeur who think that Valletta is Berlin and can sustain regular opera performances and summon up the taxes to keep the opera house going; (4) still others with a massive inferiority complex who believe that Valletta ‘needs’ an opera house to achieve the status of a capital city, as though being Valletta, unique and a UNESCO World Heritage Site is not enough; (5) annoyingly presumptuous and arrogant individuals who think that just because they act occasionally in amateur groups and listen to recordings of opera their opinions have the edge over those of the rest of us.
I’m more inclined to support the notion of a public library in its contemporary form. Now that’s something we really don’t have and really do need. And unlike a blinking, pretentious opera house to satisfy the pretensions of people who almost certainly will not be paying for it themselves because half of them appear to be pensioners and the other half fatuous fools with a superiority complex or campaigning non-earning housewives on the hunt for a reason for being (though of course, by no means all, as there are some very credible individuals there), a public library is really ‘something for the people’ which opera – the most elitist form of entertainment, the most expensive, and the most niche-interest – certainly is not.
If the prime minister has any sense, this is what he’ll go for: parliament and a public library that is especially attractive to children and young people. I like the conjunction of the two: it sends out a powerful message and makes eminent sense.
The Times – 26 January
PM hints at options on Opera House site
Christian PereginPrime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday gave a hint that the idea of turning the old Opera House site into a Parliament is not cast in stone. Asked whether he was still convinced of the controversial plan, he said he was determined to see the Valletta entrance project through. But, significantly, he added: “We still have to see about the use of the building”.
This stance seems to indicate that there may still be room for compromise on his decision to re-locate Parliament where the Opera House ruins now stand, a plan which he announced when the project was made public early in December.
The decision has drawn strong criticism from across the whole spectrum of Maltese society, including from influential persons such as tenor Joseph Calleja and former university rector Peter Serracino Inglott, who want the building to be used as a theatre or, in another suggestion, as a library.
The project is long overdue since the site was bombed in World War II and has remained that way ever since – lying idle except for some theatrical productions that have been put up in the open air in the bombed-out site. Twenty years ago plans for a redesign of the area by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano were left on the drawing board after meeting with widespread disapproval.
A few months ago Dr Gonzi announced that Mr Piano has been asked back for the project, which he aims to conclude before the next election as part of a whole regeneration of Valletta.
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Why was the old opera house hideous? I am not in favour of a new opera house, but looking at old photographs of Malta, architecture-wise, it looked imposing. But this is my humble opinion.
[Daphne – It was designed by an architect who had never visited the site and had no idea what it looked like. And so it was entirely unsuitable in terms of proportion. Also, because the architect was unaware that there was an incline, the civil engineers who actually supervised the building had to stick the opera house on a kind of semi-plinth that was never intended to be there. This plinth is the only thing that has survived. You think of it as imposing because, like me, all you know of it is from photographs taken from a higher point. The reality is that a facade of that nature was entirely in the wrong scale for such a narrow road crammed with buildings. It demanded a vast esplanade or square before it, which is indeed the case with similar buildings and grand opera houses in the cities that the Yes to an Opera House tribe like to cite. Freedom Square wasn’t there: there was a solid row of buildings all the way from the gate. On the other hand, the old opera house was very much of its time, which is why I find the arguments against a contemporary building by Renzo Piano and for a replica of the old thing utterly ridiculous and illogical. The old thing was of its time. Whatever is built instead of it must be of its time, too.]
Thank you for the information, very interesting facts that I was in ignorance of. Did you know that the row of buildings you mentioned also housed the train station booking hall? I read about it, but never managed to see a photograph of it.
[Daphne – There are plenty of old photographs and drawings available of the old entranceway to Valletta, from the inside of the city, showing the structures and buildings that were where Freedom Square and that shopping complex are now. The feeling you get looking at them is, as Piano remarked, one of ‘intensity’, almost claustrophobia.]