When the Brits ruled over, managed, and looted, quite a chunk of the world, they did know how to do a thing or two. In fact, they excelled at copying, aping and placing their silly monarchs, or statues of them, in central parts of our country.
They positioned Queen Victoria's statue - by some twisted manoeuvring she was our queen too - in one of the most beautiful Valletta squares. Thankfully, aesthetically, it isn't a horrid piece of statuary. And it can, without too much planning or worry, be easily shifted to some other corner in a Maltese minister's garden.
At least this statue can easily be moved. But the Brits did some permanent damage somewhere else. When they decided to double the size of the ornamental arched gate in Floriana, it has now become tough to make out what the original is and what was added on. Porta dei Cannoni, now better known as Porte des Bombes, will most probably remain a double gateway. Even its name is revelatory: it was one porta, a singular one. Now it uses the plural.
What they - our rulers or whoever decided it for us - did, was copy the old and give us, silly Maltese mortals, an easier passageway into Floriana. So this was one of those special moments in architectural greatness when from one gate you get two. Magic made in Malta by our lords and masters and we, the ever-ready, ever-grateful, ever-subservient people, welcomed it with open arms.
Instead of building something new they copied, aped, and added glories to our old glories.
They also wanted to give us - oh how munificent of them - an opera house. And they, of course, gave the architectural design job to, surprise surprise, an Englishman. Now this architect was so good, so worthy of his job and stature, that he designed the opera house without once setting foot on this island, let alone studying the whole fabric of the city his project was for. More magical stuff by our old masters.
That the opera house, as designed by Edward Middleton Barry, was an ostentatious horror which resembled a wedding cake more than anything the city of Valletta deserved can be put aside: because point of view is a personal and subjective one. What is factual and objective is that, because the architect did not visit the country never mind the site, he had no idea that this was on a hill so he got the elevation totally wrong. That is why the steps in front of the opera house were plonked on. They were not in the original architectural plans, so the brilliant Englishman was hardly so brilliant was he?
Yet all this can be easily dismissed as one of those quirks which happen. Subsequently, the war - that horrendous destroyer of life, limb and buildings - got rid of the opera house. But some people in Malta still clamour for the rebuilding of the old opera house; these same people think that all Renzo Piano did was ludicrous. That the way he left the gaping opera house ruins is tantamount to treason of the highest order.
These people who want it back demand that the opera house is reinstated to its former glory. It's shocking that our most cultured minister who looks after our heritage hasn't yet come up with a plan to give us back what Berry designed, what the German destroyed, and what Piano failed to do.
Malta, after all, needs a new opera house, as long - the people who want it rebuilt seem to say - as it is in the old style, in the style of an idea of an Englishman who had no clue what Valletta was all about and what it looked like. They want to ape the Englishmen of old who had no qualms about building a replica of a historic gateway. Rather like the casino and club owners in the USA who built a part of Venice in Las Vegas.
Malta's architecture has been going through horrible disfiguring. The streetscapes of whole towns and villages have been ravaged by the greed of unbridled and unruly construction. Development - as long as it is done properly and following a rigid plan - is not a dirty word.
Malta's habit of destroying architectural gems is terrible enough. Yet the modern way of saving them by just adding storey upon storey to buildings to preserve the original architecture turns them into monstrosities. The old becomes a disfigured building while the new resembles an awkward addendum.
Malta needs new ideas; old ideas need revisiting but not necessarily copied senselessly. The idea of rebuilding the old Opera House is total lunacy. What next? Now with the British colonisers gone we are our own masters. Some of us think we are masters of the universe. So maybe we should set our sights on the megalithic temples which have suffered a lot of damage in these last millennia?
Maybe we, masters of all we perceive, could pull them down and rebuild them as close to what they originally looked as possible. After all, as they now stand they are just a few blocks of stones lying around rather incongruously.
Malta could then be the best at something else: not just at conserving our heritage but recreating it in a pristine way.
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