Joseph Calleja concert drops free entrance but keeps government funds

Tista’ taqra dan l-artiklu bil-Malti hawn.

The latest open-air concert held by tenor Joseph Calleja earlier this week was still the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of euros in taxpayers’ funds through government sponsorships.

This comes despite the fact that an agreement set in 2013 in exchange for a free standing area at the annual concert failed to be honoured this year, The Shift can reveal.

A 2013 agreement, struck shortly after Labour was elected to power just a few weeks earlier, had committed the government to start making a financial allocation of some €350,000 every year towards the tenor’s annual concert so that the public could enjoy the annual event free of charge.

This agreement, which was never published, stipulated that a standing area during the concert at The Granaries in Floriana would be “sponsored by the government” so that people who couldn’t pay exorbitant ticket prices could still be “exposed to culture and music”.

Despite that, this week’s concert had no standing area as the venue was shifted this year to Fort Manoel – a smaller venue catering for dwindling concert audiences – the 3,000 members of the audience had to pay or obtain a free ‘sponsored’ ticket to attend the concert. But even though the government-sponsored free standing area was eliminated, the Malta Tourism Authority still forked out its annual contribution toward the tenor’s annual do.

Asked to state how much taxpayer money was allocated for this year’s Joseph Calleja concert, his 25^th, MTA Chairman Gavin Gulia and its newly promoted CEO Carlo Micallef refused to give any details.

Both have also failed to justify why the government still forked hundreds of thousands of euros towards the concert when no free-standing area was made available to the public.

The Shift is informed that while some concert-goers had to pay between €80 and €200 per ticket to enjoy the show, most attendees were given complimentary tickets either through sponsors or through government contacts as part of the deal with Calleja.

These included ministers, their extended families, and others close to the Labour administration, particularly those working in ministerial private secretariats.

Initially, the 2013 agreement was signed on behalf of Calleja by NNG promotions, his concert organisers. This year, the concert was organised by Mint Media, established in 2016, with the former PBS boss Anton Attard as its sole shareholder.

It is unclear what arrangements are in place for any profits from the concert shared with the tenor.

Apart from the generous annual government sponsorship, Calleja was also appointed Malta’s Cultural Ambassador and is the secretary of the BOV Joseph Calleja Foundation.

Until today, Michelle Muscat, spouse of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat is one of the administrators of Calleja’s BOV Foundation together with Helga Ellul, member of the board of Allied Newspapers, Alfred Pisani, the Chair of the Corinthia Group, Roderick Chalmers, former BOV Chairman and Alec Lapira.