ARTED OUT

Is it impossible to have too much of a good thing?

Anyone who has partaken of too much chocolate knows that this is a darn fool question, but I´m talking of more intellectual pursuits here. Over the last couple of days, I´ve been lucky enough to have been spending time in Madrid, which like all big cities has an abundance of art museums.

In no order of size or importance, we´ve been to a themed exhibition on "Shadows", to a whole exhibition dedicated to Francis Bacon (a troubled soul if ever there was one and an inspiration, I´ve figured out, genius that I am, for Gerald Scarfe) to the Prado, to the Thyssen-Bornemisza and to the Reina Sofia.

Oh, and to the Sorolla House, too. I tend to spend a tad less time than the missus at these things, since she has a professional imperative to examine each single brush-stroke, whereas I tend to wander around, sometimes with an Audioguide stuck to my ear, doing what magpies are reputed to do. In other words, I roam aimlessly, stopping at what takes my fancy.

In the time I have to kill while waiting for my wife, which is generally in the order of 30 or 40 minutes, at least, depending on the size of the exhibition, I find myself musing on the mysteries of life, the universe and everything. One of these mysteries, which occurred to me while getting progressively (or should that be regressively?) colder outside the Thssyen Museum, was how so many people are going about girding their loins for the fight that´s coming up about the use to which the site of the Opera House should be put when it´s refurbished.

Many worthy folk are laying down the law about how we need an Arts Centre there, preferably coupled with a state-of-the-art opera house. In an ideal world, this would perhaps be the case, but what people like this, who no doubt have visited such facilities in other countries, fail to appreciate is that, not to put too fine a point on it, we live in a country which is the size, resources-wise, of a pretty small town.

Yes, it would be nice to have our own version of the Sydney Opera House, though I have no doubt that certain parties would find objection to it on aesthetic or heritage-protection grounds, but, read my lips, we can´t flipping afford it. Not unless the the hundred or so people who would go to every performance put on there (I mean every performance, not the annual things like the Gozo Opera) are prepared to put their hands in their pockets and pay astronomic amounts.

And I do mean astronomic.

The same goes for having a decent art exhibition facility. I fully agree that it would be nice to have something of the sort, with all manner of excellent works exhibited, but can we afford to employ the number of people needed to ensure that it´s run correctly?

And I´m only talking about the human resources aspect here, leaving out all the other bits and bobs needed for a really good arts centre. Of course we can´t: it´s sad that we can´t, but we can´t. It´s not that we don´t know how to do things properly, of course. Contrary to what many people seem to think, we can do things right in Malta and we have people who know how to do their job and get it done properly.

It´s just that in the real world, things cost money and we just don´t have it, and nor do we have enough of a market to which to sell the product that makes it financially feasible.

So when the battle starts about what to do with the Old Opera House, let´s just keep our feet on the ground, so we don´t find ourselves scuppering a project without proper discussion jsut because someone or other has taken it into his or her head to start laying down the law. It´s not like it hasn´t happened before. For those of you who might have spotted the fact that this is a shorter edition than usual, well, hey, I´m on holiday.