The Manoel Theatre, the Knights' playhouse that never stopped working

Over the Manoel Theatre’s door is a line in Latin, ad honestam populi oblectationem, for the honest entertainment of the people. I love that the Grand Master of a military and religious order spent his money on that. Nearly three centuries on it’s still doing exactly the same job, and you can go inside.

A theatre built in ten months

In 1731 Grand Master Antonio Manoel de Vilhena bought two houses on what was then Strada del Carmine, now Old Theatre Street, to build a public theatre. It took only ten months and cost him 2,184 scudi, which the theatre puts at €41,715 today. On 19 January 1732 it opened with Merope, Scipione Maffei’s tragedy, performed by the Italian knights. Two days later the French knights put on a play of their own.

The theatre itself passes on, as something that “is said”, that part of the Grand Master’s reasoning was to keep the young knights out of mischief by giving them plays to act in during their time off. I can’t confirm it, but it rings true to me. For who those knights were, read up on the Knights of St John in Malta.

Three names and an auditorium that changed shape

It started life as the Teatro Pubblico. When the British arrived in 1800 it became the Real Teatro di Malta and was reworked to seat more people, under the Royal Engineer George Whitmore. That’s why today’s oval auditorium isn’t the original, which was horseshoe-shaped. In 1866 it lost its status as Theatre Royal to the new, much bigger Royal Opera House at the city entrance, and took the name Teatru Manoel. What’s left of that opera house, bombed in 1942, is on my page about Valletta City Gate and Parliament.

There are other episodes I enjoy. In 1813 and 1814 it was shut on the Civil Commissioner’s orders during an outbreak of bubonic plague. In 1907 it staged its first British-style pantomime, which the theatre says remains its most popular event every year, something any British visitor will recognise. In 1948 a Maltese tenor, Oreste Kirkop, stepped into the Duke of Mantua halfway through a Rigoletto, the start of a career that took him to Covent Garden. In 1960 it reopened after three years of restoration. And on 27 December 1922, Malta’s national anthem, L-Innu Malti, was played in public here for the first time.

What the guided tour shows you

The guided tour covers the theatre’s history and takes you into the Baroque interior. The theatre describes itself as reputed to be Europe’s third-oldest working theatre and the oldest working theatre in the Commonwealth, and I’ll quote that as its own claim.

The main auditorium seats 547 across the stalls, the parterre boxes, 51 individual boxes on three tiers and the gallery. The chandelier and the sconces along the boxes were replaced during the pandemic closure with blown white Murano glass, and the theatre reopened at the end of October 2021.

Next door, the old Monastery of Navarre is being turned into rehearsal rooms, a foyer, box office and bar, and the façade is being taken back to its 1731 design. The work began in 2015 and the theatre still lists it as ongoing. Up on the top floor there’s also a small Studio Theatre, entered through the stage door on Old Mint Street, with room for 60.

Times, price and the rehearsal caveat

The tour costs €10 and suits all ages. On weekdays from 1 September to 19 June it runs at 11:00 and 15:00; from 20 June to 31 August at 10:30 and 12:00. Saturdays have three slots, 10:30, 11:30 and 12:30, and there are no tours on Sundays.

The caveat is that this is a working theatre. Rehearsals or technical work can put the auditorium out of bounds and tours may be cancelled or rescheduled, so I wouldn’t leave it to your last day. If you’re travelling in January, the Manoel is one of the venues of the Valletta International Baroque Festival, held that month since 2013, and that’s when I’d most want to hear music in the room.

It sits in central Valletta, a short walk from the Grandmaster’s Palace and Casa Rocca Piccola, so it slots into any walk round Valletta.