Does the country really want a National Orchestra?

I worse to comment on my resignation from chairing the board of the Orkestra Nazzjonali, particularly in view of various reports elsewhere. I must clarify that, because of various adverse judgments against the orchestra's management from the Ombudsman and because of various rumours about its modus operandi, neither did I seek nor did I initially accept the responsibility. However, finding myself in this unwanted position in September 2003, I approached it with integrity and dedication.

I must clarify that, had I in fact been pressurised to have the Orkestra Nazzjonali play for the pittance of Lm1,500 at the end of April, I would have been riled but might have stomached it. However, had I been pressurised to have the Orkestra Nazzjonali absorb other expenses of similar levels for the same event, I would have found it intolerable and would never have countenanced it so long as I remained a member, let alone the chairman, of its board.

Also, had the first words of greeting to me been: "How do you get on with Mro X? I am a very good friend of his and of his wife," I would have assumed this to be courteous information and not a prelude to subsequent Byzantine manoeuvering. But all this is hypothetical.

As soon as I found this duty thrust upon me, I started to familiarise myself with my task. I will concede, a priori, that the National Orchestra has significant intrinsic problems but these are not insurmountable and are more than matched by enormous potential and a great deal of enthusiasm and good will on the part of most musicians.

I immediately realised that the orchestra was bankrupt, having to scrape the wherewithal to pay the wages each month, wages which, on one occasion, could only be issued late. There are 41 musicians, one accounts clerk, one executive officer and one music director on the payroll. Leaner than that it is impossible to be. Yet the wage bill is just short of Lm300,000 a year. This is taxpayers' money and the Orkestra Nazzjonali must give a good account for this outlay.

The government subvention totalled only Lm235,000. Last January, I made a submission to the ministry of finance and this subvention was increased to Lm270,000, but I was asked to generate some Lm70,000 to supplement it.

I discovered that the Orkestra Nazzjonali had long been owed over Lm10,000 after a trip to Italy. I have been able to collate the necessary data and have addressed this by representations at the highest levels in Italy. One hopes that it is not too late to retrieve these monies. I also found out that, as from 1999, the Orkestra Nazzjonali had an agreement with the Manoel Theatre to jointly produce a season of concerts in which both parties would share costs and profits. However the Orkestra Nazzjonali was not expected to, and did not, charge for its wage bill, which amounts to about Lm1,500 a day.

Given that a concert would need between four to six rehearsal days, the dress rehearsal and the actual performance, one is looking at a wage bill per concert of Lm9,000-Lm12,000. The music director was paid separately.

Surprisingly, not only did the Orkestra Nazzjonali not make any profit from this but the accounting used showed a loss for the orchestra every year since 1999 from this arrangement, at times running into thousands of liri. If the relevant wage bill had to be added, one would be looking at a loss of over Lm50,000 a year. What absolutely astounded me was that the board members who had served while all this was occurring, claimed that they were not aware of any of this.

We therefore resolved that the Orkestra Nazzjonali would offer its services for Lm3,000 per concert and so sponsor each concert by two-thirds, assuming a wage bill of some Lm9,000 per concert. Before we did this, we considered the relative fixed expenses of both parties. We considered that the orchestra depended only on its subvention (which did not cover wages) and income from hiring out its services while the Manoel Theatre, apart from the subvention (which one assumes covered its then wage bill many times over), could also presumably depend on income from its museum, flats, cafeteria and restaurant, the lease of its shop and the fixed sponsors; the latter amounting to many thousands of liri annually.

Despite all this, there was tremendous resistance to this generous arrangement and a new sharing arrangement was insisted upon, despite the desperate financial situation of the Orkestra Nazzjonali and the relatively florid one of the Manoel. This needed trust that was not there, particularly after the Orkestra Nazzjonali was coerced to play for the Calleja/Schembri concert in April for much less than the pre-agreed Lm3,000.

What particularly riled me was being one of some 15 guests at a celebratory dinner after this concert when our musicians' livelihood was at risk. I would have preferred that money to have gone to the orchestra. When I similarly hosted an ambassador in the same restaurant after a concert, I paid out of my own pocket.

There were other problems. I objected strongly to the fact that the Orkestra Nazzjonali was not consulted at all in the preparations for the celebration of Malta's accession to the European Union. I objected not because I was on its board but because it is the only orchestra in Malta. Who else should be consulted on musical matters? I will not comment more on that.

I resented the fact that a member of the orchestra board was responsible for the debacle of May 9 at St John's Co-Cathedral when some Lm95,000 (some claim more like an unbelievable Lm150,000) were frittered away on an eclectic foreign orchestra and singers. So bad was the result that not a single foreign station transmitted it, contrary to forecasts. We would have done much better with Maltese music from the Cathedral Archives, the Orkestra Nazzjonali and singers like Joseph Calleja, Miriam Gauci, Miriam Cauchi, Claire Massa and Noel Galea, to name but a few.

We showed what we could do in the concert for the 40th anniversary of independence and that for a pittance. How can anyone reconcile being a member of the board of the Orkestra Nazzjonali and doing it that disservice on May 9?

It was also galling to find that after the board unanimously agreed on a course of action vis-à-vis a musician/s, a member of the board would, behind the scenes, foment an adverse reaction from the same musician/s. As before in my surgical practice, I scrupulously avoided any semblance of unjustified partiality or currying favour, refusing dinner engagements unless I was paying, and home visits. I was nonplussed to realise that, soon after appointment, a board member intended to personally carry abroad information we regularly transmitted via e-mail to an artist we had dealings with. This could only have been exceeded, in my view, by being proffered the advice to ignore the Ombudsman like the government did and to just curry favour with the minister.

I feel that the country must be honest with itself and decide if it really wants an Orkestra Nazzjonali. If it does, it must fund it properly. In this context, by the time I left we had managed to improve cash flow and after representations to the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, I am confident that this problem will be addressed properly in the very near future.

I believe that the Orkestra Nazzjonali must be truly everybody's and not just address a restricted clique, it must be easily accessed by all musical directors and singers and not the privileged few, it must be apolitical and not a toy in some minister's hand, its musicians must be empowered, encouraged, appreciated, developed but at the same time disciplined.

I believe that we can truly reach world standards as has been amply demonstrated by Joseph Calleja, a Maltese tenor trained by another Maltese tenor, Paul Asciak. All that is needed is integrity, discipline, hard work and dedication.