Uncovering the Royal Opera House

That is how Vicki Ann Cremona, Malta’s Ambassador in Tunisia who is also a theatre historian, described the recently uncovered theatre skeleton.

The theatre site has been mired in controversy for the past year, with the government wanting to leave it as an open-air performance space, and artists believing it would be a waste to use the venue only in summer, the only time of year when any open space can be used for performances.

The base of the ROH shows it can function as a closed theatre space if adapted to modern theatre exigencies. This was expressed by theatre lecturer John Schranz and Joe Vella (aka ‘Fuji’), who has 35 years of experience in the technical aspect of theatre, and is also a member of Association for Performing Arts Practitioners (APAP).

Schranz remarked: “It is not correct to say that the footprint cannot house a theatre to meet Malta’s needs. Details of the ROH seating plan, stage dimensions and overall footprint speak out for themselves. It shows that less than a third of the space was used for the stage and less than a third was used for audience seating.”

Vella commented: “What I cannot understand is on what grounds we are being told that the present site is not large enough to have a fully-fledged theatre. There are theatres which have a smaller footprint and yet the most demanding (stagewise) productions are performed there. A case in point is the theatre La Monnaie in Brussels. This theatre roughly has the same footprint of the ROH, and

in February 2011 they will be performing Wagner’s ‘Parsifal’.”

Even the Aida, an enormously demanding opera, was performed in the ROH a few years after it had premiered abroad.

“Edward Barry designed the theatre for 1,095 seated persons and 200 standing. According to the original plans the proscenium width was 14m, the width of the stage was 26m, while the depth of the stage from the main curtain setting line was 15m. The auditorium and stage area only occupied 30% of the entire site footprint. The other 70% were taken up by features which are irrelevant to a truly functioning theatre,” added Vella.

Vella also mentioned that the site cannot be used as is, and a reproduction of Barry’s theatre would be irrelevant. It needs to be transformed to fulfill today’s needs. However, he insisted such footprint can accommodate a closed theatre if designed appropriately.

The Royal Opera House was inaugurated in 1866, exactly 10 years after the Covent Garden theatre had burned down. It was this fire that led Barry to redesign a new theatre, based on Milan’s La Scala, at the time the largest theatre in Europe. His rise to fame led to the commission for the Malta Royal Opera House.

The photos show clearly that the actual concept of the building followed other European models of the time: the theatre had a large foyer, which today would probably be situated under the theatre, in order not to rob any space from the seating; it had a wide horseshoe shape, which was the nineteenth-century development of the original baroque structure of the ‘teatro all’italiana’, that had spread through Europe in the 18th century; and quite a deep stage for the time, as the photos clearly show, and which in modern times, would require at least an equal space beneath for scenic changes, rehearsal space etc.

It must not be forgotten that the theatre, which at the time had cost £70,000, burned down in 1873, leaving only the exterior masonry intact. It was restructured by the Maltese architects E.L. Galizia and S. Fenech, together with W. Paulson, at considerable cost, and fitted with new technology that included lighter materials and a zinc soffitt, to protect against fire.

It would be interesting to carry out some intense archaeological work to see how the original shape was modified when the theatre was rebuilt in the space of five years. It is of vital importance to archeologically document the site very carefully, as this data is essential for theatre and architectural history and research, and the current excavations have provided a unique opportunity to record initial structures and modifications, and thereby understand better the way theatre, and therefore society, in 19th century Malta was physically organised. There is some visual, graphic and written documentation to this effect, but examining the physical reality far surpasses any paper description.