My thoughts, exactly
This was a hideously inappropriate building for Valletta
Sometimes I read a newspaper column and my reaction is: ‘Now I don’t have to bother writing that one myself.’ So here are my precise thoughts on the matter of an opera house. I’ll just add one small point: it really is all done to a superiority complex and the belief that opera occupies a privileged position in the arts firmament, which obliges us to burn money, space and effort in sacrifice to it.
The reality is that opera in the 21st century is very much a niche interest. It was developed as a form of entertainment, and not as a form of art, and it remains essentially that. That is why only relatively few people now find it entertaining – because taste has changed dramatically over the last couple of centuries, but opera has remained fossilised, unlike other forms of art or entertainment.
One or two people commenting below this article on www.timesofmalta.com make it clear that it is not the opera they are interested in so much as the status of having an opera house. But that too is fossilised thinking. Opera houses no longer convey status on a city. The world has moved on.
And surely they see it: Valletta is a World Heritage Site. It is has the unique status of having been built in toto – originally – by the Order of St John. It doesn’t need any more status than that, because it has all the status it is ever going to need, already.
The Times, Friday, 8th May 2009
Rocking the opera house
Lou Bondi
I always wanted to see Paul McCartney in concert before he keeled over. Seeing him in Malta was not an option. The euros simply did not add up: his fee would be too high for a sane local promoter to risk bringing him over. So I went to see him at the O2 in London. Following the first bars of Hey Jude, I could have died a happy man.
Faced with a parallel situation, a gaggle of vociferous Maltese opera fans are calling for a different route to satisfy their musical tastes. They expect, nay, demand, that they hear their music at whatever cost. As long as that cost is borne by others.
Let’s cut to the chase. Opera productions in Malta lose oodles of money.
The last edition of the BOV Opera Festival ended up with €90,000 in the red. There is another equally perturbing reality check. Opera goers in our midst number no more than 700 and even they are not showing up in droves.
Opera appears to be more sustainable in the two Gozitan theatres, owned by different band clubs. But there is a reason. They rely heavily on their members’ voluntary work. Once this support thins out, as it is bound to in this day and age, Gozitan opera productions will become a thing of the past.
Rather than be humbled by this bleak scenario, Maltese opera goers have decided to be belligerent. As tens of thousands of taxpayer euros burn between one aria and another, they issued two decrees. Taxpayers should subsidise their musical tastes even more. And, even more brazenly, taxpayers should buy them a rather expensive toy, a new opera house.
What these decrees amount to is simple: the hoovering up of vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to subsidise the musical tastes of 700 people. This is nothing less than extortion masquerading as cultural enlightenment. Taxpayers who are uninterested in opera have no divine obligation to fund the tastes of 700 people. If opera is not financially feasible in Malta, take a plane.
I can already hear the protests of those who still argue that public funds should be used to support “high” culture while “low”culture, like rock music, is best left to the vagaries of the plebeian market. To these tiresome men and women still sipping their tea in a musty Valletta piano nobile circa 1950, I suggest that they look north. They will see Queen Elisabeth II celebrating her jubilee with a rock concert on her palace grounds, the Queen of Sweden awarding the Polar Music Prize – music’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize – to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and the University of Liverpool offering an entire degree in the study of Beatles music.
This is not a diatribe against opera or its fans. It is a call for a sense of perspective amidst the irrational shrillness of the opera brigade’s coda. Certain niche art forms, including opera, do deserve some sort of public support. But this should be granted only after certain questions are prudently and unequivocally answered. What exactly is the capital and recurrent expenditure presently being demanded by opera fans as of right? Is the amount socially just, given that the maximum number of beneficiaries is 700 people? If it is allotted, will equity with respect to other specialised art forms be honoured? Should opera lovers, like aficionados of other niche art forms, be expected to travel and pay their own way to enjoy their music?
Now I’m off to pack my bags to go to Rome for a Jackson Browne concert, two hours of Californian soft rock at its dark best. Can you imagine me expecting opera lovers to pay for me to hear him sing “Take it easy” under a pale Roman moon? Of course not. So why should I pay for them to hear a has-been Italian tenor sing Verdi? And to pay for the theatre he sings in to boot.
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I may not always agree with what Lou Bondi writes in the papers or says during his TV appearances; I also am not a fan of his Larry King style braces but this opinion piece about opera productions in Malta and the new opera house is the most balanced and sanest piece I have read about this subject. So called opera lovers did a no-show at the recent BOV sponsored opera festival, ergo – as legal beagles say – a whopping Euro90K loss!.If they really love opera, they should put their money where their mouth is. They should also stop insisting as a God given right that the new opera house should be an exact replica of the one designed by Barry which is out of sync with rest of Valletta’s architecture and had bad acoustics.
Ha ha ha… how very Lou! While I disagree that opera lovers in Malta number so few, I agree hundred percent with his reasoning that we should not spend the money on a new opera house just for the sake of having one. The stark reality is that we in Malta can only see good opera and, for that matter, good ballet, abroad. Whether we have a state-of-the-art opera house or not does not guarantee we will have first class performances as the issue here is not the lack of a proper venue but the lack of an audience to make the visit of first class performers economically viable.
That theatre was totally out of touch with the Renaissance/Baroque atmosphere of Valletta but neo-classicism was close to the hearts of the British. E.M. Barry never even visited the site on which his theatre was to be built and he was not aware that the site is a slope. He designed the theatre to be built on level ground and, when he discovered his mistake, he came up with those little shops underneath. The result was that the steps at the front elevation were, as one may still see, very steep and uncomfortable to climb and clearly an ugly afterthought.
If a theatre is built, Barry’s design should be excluded. An all-purpose hall in modern style such as is found in many capitals today should be constructed and it could serve for all kinds of music and drama events as well as conference hall – unless, that is, the idea of a House of Parliament is implemented.
Pawl, actually it is Liverpool Hope University not the Liverpool University which offers a master’s course in Beatles Studies.
It’s sad that we have to break it down into opera vs rock or some other usual black and white issue. Opera’s a thing of the past? Not quite. Opera not sustainable on its own? Of course not. That is why countries that put a few thinking heads together tend to find a way to solve this kind of problem.
[Daphne – Yes, by having societies of very wealthy patron-donors called Friends of the Opera, who shell out vast sums from their own personal fortunes to keep the project going. That’s not going to happen here. And by organising corporate donors who fork out even larger sums. That’s not going to happen here either. And yes, opera is definitely the entertainment of the past, which is why it is almost exclusively associated with the late-middle-aged and the elderly. Its natural market is dying, not growing. Some younger people patronise the opera because they are genuinely interested in the music, but on the whole, when younger people attend an opera production it’s because they think it’s something they should do at least once. It’s not a matter of opera v. rock. It’s a matter of markets, as with everything else. And it’s one of the reasons why the managers of some of the more famous tenors thought it necessary, some years ago, to have them sing rock hymns in duet with stars of popular music – to reach a new audience. But that’s as far as it went.]
Luxembourg rocks (or chants) in this respect. Check out the very vibrant Luxembourg Philharmonie site: http://www.philharmonie.lu/ which worked wonders for opera, theatre as well as Goran Bregovic. Also check out the Luxembourg recently added Rock Hall called (very inventively – the Dar Centrali posse must be in on this one) Rockhal – http://www.rockhal.lu that might not yet have attracted Sir Paul but does it for the likes of Pink, Morrissey, Mika, Capossela, Tiesto and Snow Patrol to name but a few. Thanks to Rockhal Luxembourg managed to get the greatest names on its home turf over the past few years.
[Daphne – A bit of a fatuous comparison, don’t you think? Luxembourg might be a titchy country like Malta, but it’s squashed between some other places from which people can drive across the border for a spot of opera, as they do for work. I can’t see anyone catching two flights to Malta for an opera in Valletta.]
There’s hope yet. And oh… whenever the RSC is in town they perform at the Theatre National – which is another addition to the above two. And I forget the Atelier and the Abbe de Neumeyster.
Where am I getting at? Where there’s a will, and a bit of proper planning, their’s a way. At worst drill a large amphitheatre into an unused barriera and soon you could be vying with Taormina for nighttime summer concerts of delight.
Ok. but with the same argument, we should close down the national stadium, as it is not making money, close down the basketball court, no more Isle of MTV as we are losing money there too, and so and so forth.
[Daphne – Not really, as none of those are minority interests, and Isle of MTV is considered an investment for promotional purposes.]
Isle of MTV is indeed considered an investment, but is it a productive investment…ie has anybody quantified how many extra tourists visit the island because of this event?
Government does not pay the artists who appear in Isle of MTV. MTV does. The fees for Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas alone approach 1 million euros.
As I am no opera fan myself, I still can’t comprehend what is so wrong with the Mediterranean Conference Centre to stage opera. If modifications need to be done (to the stage?), then let’s cost it, and satisfy the opera lovers once and for all, without building another theatre. The MCC is very much underused, especially with competition from the MFCC at Ta’ Qali – which is truly an all purpose hall. But since that venue is privately owned, it will obviously avoid hosting loss-making events.
Another white elephant in Valletta is the Casino Maltese, which Parliament unanimously agreed to rent out for a pittance, for an “elite” membership of the (mostly) legal profession. Give this building back to the people for a more deserving cause.
The problem with the MCC is the acoustics. Talk to any audio engineer who has worked there, and they will all tell you that the reverberation, tonal dispersion and amplitude projection are a problem.
Hi Daphne,
What can I say? You know what I think about the issue and I know and respect your views. But I still maintain that the site should be used to host a building that is arts related, be it a theatre, a drama school, etc. My personal preference would be to have a theatre similar to The Globe in London that can seat about 400 patrons. The reason would be that such a theatre can lend itself to many different types of productions.
[Daphne – From what I understand, Renzo Piano is going to keep it as a theatre site which incorporates the ruins, because he believes they are a monument to the war – and have great symbolic value, as we have seen from all these debates – and should be preserved. The parliament house will be built on the empty space called Freedom Square.]
Creativity is the biggest-growing industry in the world and Malta needs to learn to develop itself in this aspect. But an opera house or even a theatre just for the sake of having one indeed is wrong. I feel the industry should be encouraged to develop and grow. This would help the whole island.
Daphne – Mepa have scheduled the remains of the Opera House as a Grade 1 monument, which means they are untouchable (not sure whether I agree with this). So it seems that Piano has no choice in the matter. Now whether this constraint will hinder the full flowering of his expression, or whether he will still be able to produce something iconic, remains to be seen. We shall soon see.
Agreed. An opera house is unnecessary. But that doesn’t mean the space should be taken up by a parliament building. Let’s keep that in mind, please.
[Daphne – Parliament House is going to be on the space currently occupied by……nothing. If you hold democracy in lower esteem than the performing arts, fine. Fortunately, you are not in the majority.]
Your argument that whoever is against building parliament in that space is also anti-democratic is false, and you know it. Respect for democracy does not mean one should expect the parliament to be slam bang in the entrance of Valletta. I fail to see the connection.
[Daphne – That’s probably because you’re unobservant, and haven’t noticed that the main gist of the arguments against having ‘parliament slam bang in the entrance to Valletta’ is that parliament and parliamentarians don’t deserve the status. Hence….you place democracy, which in all democracies is symbolised by the house of parliament or its equivalent, somewhere further down the scale of importance than theatrics.]
Kenneth Zammit Tabona isn’t going to let Lou Bondi have the last say: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090512/opinion/bread-cake-and-circuses.
I was mulling the possibility of launching a “For the Opera House” fund, and then sit back and watch how many pro-Opera House people are willing to put their money where their mouth is, and how much each would be willing to contribute…
I stopped taking you seriously when you equated opera to, “essentially”, entertainment. I’m curious … do you lump all of classical music with opera in this regard?
Yes, Verdi’s Aida and Mozart’s Magic Flute are very entertaining. In the same way that Fellini’s La Strada, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Coltrane’s A Love Supreme are also very entertaining. But they are, more importantly, great works of art. Which is why they stood the test of time.
To this day, new operas ARE still being written and produced … classic operas are re-interpreted and updated. Just because you, your close friends or Lou Bondi don’t know of any new operas, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
At this point, putting forward an argument for or against a new opera house is futile. I just hope that whoever is in charge of the Arts & Culture in Malta does not share your views.
I can see it now, opera tickets at EUR200 and people queuing up to buy. Seriously though, I was checking for cheap tickets at opera houses .. $400 .. $300. The more I researched, the nuttier an opera house in Malta sounds.
Look at this one:
Section: Complete Box (6 Row: 1-2-3 $3548.00 1
You will be charged in British Pounds for these tickets using the current exchange rate. Tickets may not be delivered until just before the event date and may need to be delivered to your hotel destination. [ID=493508]
And then people complained because tickets to listen to Joseph Calleja were EUR60, and yet they want an opera house. All they want is another reason to grumble.
I have been to a number of operas (in various theatres in the UK) and the most I ever paid for a seat is £35.
EUR80EUR is not necessarily expensive for a full production opera. On the other hand it is expensive for a tenor singing excerpts from different operas (without backdrops, props, costumes, choreography, etc). There’s a big difference.
A national theatre need not only host operas but countless other events that make loads of money. This is sad. Only in a country like Malta does the building of a proper theatre seem like an extravagance.
A National Theatre would not be used just for operas but also for other kinds of events that make serious money: musicals, ballets, pop concerts etc … It can be done as long as the theatre has the proper facilities.
Oh, and I’ve just checked La Scala’s prices for operas. If you look at the prices for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress or Verdi’s Aida you will see that prices start from just 27EUR. This is Milan’s La Scala we’re talking about … one of the world’s most prestigious opera houses.
Weep ….. weep… sob …sob.. cry …. cry … waaaahhhhh what a crrrrrruuuueeeelllllll cruel world!! … sob … sob… This sums up Kenneth Zammit Tabona’s rreaction to Lou Bondi’s article.
Joking apart, Lou Bondi’s article was absolutely spot-on. People like KZT speak as if government has a bottomless pit stacked up with cash or that opera lovers have some god-given right to be pampered with taxpayers’ money.
When a decision on any major development is taken, the matter of cost must enter the equation. How much will it cost to build? How much will it cost to run? Will it be economically feasible in the long run and, if not, what will the annual cost to government be? Dismissing these concerns with the rhetorical question “Since when has culture been considered a waste of money?” is simply not good enough.
Besides, if a particular cultural sector is subsidised, is that subsidy justifiable? Is the subsidy comparable to subsidies which other sectors of the arts receive?
So you opera people out there, stop imposing your tastes and values on the rest of us. Stop expecting the taxpayer to fund your extravagant dream.
Glory, glory, glory. The all-wise and all-knowing Astrid has spoken. Bow your heads all you poor mortals and listen and learn. Let know one speaketh contrary lest he will be besmotten. The All-Knowing wrote a post in the timesomalta.com in support of KZT.
Horror of horrors, both the Manoel and MCC leak rainwater onto the stage. And let no one question this Fact of Facts because it has been uttered by none other then the All-Knowing. And banish the thought if you are thinking that it is one zillion times cheaper to fix a leaking roof than to build a new theatre.
Yes, let us have a three-thousand seater national theatre in Valletta and dig a big hole next to it to put in a massive underground car park. The all-knowing has decreed that it is OK for the cars of the three thousand to spout their sweet-smelling exhaust up the nostrils of Valletta residents for three evenings every week.
And by the way, you can lock up the Manoel and MCC and throw away the key. There simply aren’t enough theatre-goers to fill all three.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090512/opinion/bread-cake-and-circuses
The Oracle has spoken: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090513/opinion/theatrical-manoeuvres.
If there is so much demand, I wonder how no private investor decide to give KZT, Astrid, et al, the building they are crying for.
Have you seen Lou Bondi article in today’s Times?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090519/opinion/let-them-eat-fake
The way Bondi puts forward arguments based on reason and common sense is music to my ears! What a contrast to the hysterics and straw-clutching of the likes of KZT and Know-it-All Astrid.