Brikkuni Teatru Rjal outrage recalls performance venue problems

Though most of the island was probably away from their computers last Thursday in favour of a spot of the sunny outdoors on the occasion of the feast of Santa Marija, a section of Malta's social networking web was alight with sound and fury, as the folk-pop act Brikkuni announced that they will be cancelling their concert at Valletta's Teatru Rjal in September owing to allegedly sky-high rental fees.

Eleventh hour discussions with concerned parties may lead Brikkuni to reconsider their decision, though no official confirmation was forthcoming by the time of going to print.

Taking to Facebook to vent his frustration, Brikkuni frontman Mario Vella revealed that the venue - the restored Old Opera House - would cost €2,000 to rent, a figure that, according to Vella's calculations, would balloon up to €3,940 when all expenses (including sound engineering, security and other concert necessities) are taken into account.

"Nobody can afford such terms, except for those few bands who have the necessary social connections to win sponsorships and those cultural prostitutes who are ready to affiliate any sort of product or service to the arts just to sell tickets," Vella said on his Facebook wall.

Fans and fellow musicians were largely sympathetic to Vella's protestations. Former Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Michael Briguglio wrote a rapid-fire blog post on the issue, suggesting that the restrictive fees gives the lie to Labour's supposedly emancipatory electoral promises.

"If anything, this confirms that the 'taghna lkoll' talk of 'inclusive' cultural policy before the last general elections was nothing but half-hearted plagiarism of progressive proposals for a truly egalitarian and emancipatory cultural policy," Briguglio wrote.

But though the (seemingly interminable) Facebook discussion that followed Vella's announcement was chiefly concerned with whether the Teatru Rjal rental fee was justified, it also brought to mind one as yet unresolved issue within the local musical scene: a lack of adequate concert venues for bands to perform in.

Read the full report in MaltaToday's print edition