Noel Grima

It was given huge prominence in The Sunday Times last Sunday – no less than a story on three columns written by the editor himself, with a photo included for good measure and headlined “Opera stars for Manoel concert in first-ever ‘simulcast’ with US”.

Then, two days later, The Times was forced into a U-turn: “Contrary to what was reported in The Sunday Times of 30 April,” it said, getting even the date wrong, “Joseph

Calleja will not be taking part in the concert.”

And further down it also announced that soprano Miriam Gauci, billed to be taking part in the concert as well, will not be taking part, either.

The concert, by the prestigious Richard Tucker Foundation of New York, is still on the Manoel website, but booking has not yet opened for the 28 May concert whereas there is no mention at all of such a prestigious concert on the Tucker Foundation’s own website.

Apart from Joseph Calleja (who has sung for the foundation in the past) and Miriam Gauci, other top-notch classical singers – Bryn Terfel, the famous Welsh baritone, Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelica Kirschlager, Italian soprano Gianna Corbusiero, American soprano Maureen O’Flynn and French tenor Marc Hervieux – were all billed as taking part.

Contacted officially, a spokesman for the Manoel Theatre said the administration did sign a contract for the lease of the theatre on 28 May but is still awaiting details from the foundation as to prices and so on. It is for this reason that booking has still not opened.

Other sources told this newspaper that the claimed “simulcast” – a direct television link to a 3,000-strong audience in Washington DC attending a matinee performance due to the time difference – is a technical impossibility for various reasons.

But what had Manoel Theatre aficionados rolling in the aisles in this operetta is that this big-name concert is the brainwave of former Manoel Theatre chairman John Lowell who, now that his term as Malta’s ambassador to the US is over, is busy lobbying ministers to be re-appointed chairman since the current incumbent, Wilfred Kennely, will soon be leaving for India to take up his post as Malta’s High Commissioner there.