Art & Creativity Quote by Lesley Garrett

Garrett is doing something slyly pragmatic here: she frames “elitism” not as an inherent truth about opera, but as a media-generated problem amplified by repetition. The key move is that she doesn’t deny the stereotype with lofty defenses about artistic merit; she diagnoses it as a communications failure. “Through the media attention that these artists receive” shifts blame away from the form itself and onto the ecosystem that packages it - critics, profile writers, broadcasters, even promoters who sell opera as a luxury good. The subtext is blunt: opera has been branded, and the brand is hurting the audience.

Her phrasing also reveals how the “elite” label gets manufactured. It’s not that opera is only consumed by an “elitist group”; it’s that there’s been “an awful lot of talk” about it. Talk becomes fate. Once “elitist” is the default descriptor, everything around opera starts to confirm it: ticket prices look like proof, dress codes become myth, foreign languages read as gatekeeping, and audiences begin self-selecting. The stereotype doesn’t just describe the room; it curates who feels entitled to enter it.

As a working musician who’s spent decades in public view, Garrett’s intent reads as protective and strategic. She’s arguing for access without sounding defensive, inviting people to notice the rhetoric around opera as much as the music itself. In late-20th-century Britain, where class markers still shape cultural life, that’s not a neutral point. It’s a pushback against the idea that enjoyment requires credentials - and a reminder that institutions can’t broaden audiences while marketing exclusivity.