Art & Creativity Quote by Bruce Beresford

There is a sly backhand embedded in Beresford's compliment: “most popular operas” signals a canon built as much by habit and institutional comfort as by pure artistry, and “endless revivals” reads less like triumph than like a treadmill. As a director, he’s talking from inside the machine that keeps these works alive - and profitable. The line works because it flatters opera’s prestige while quietly pointing at the industry’s dependence on repetition. Opera houses don’t just revere these scores; they rely on them as cultural insurance policies.

The phrasing “so highly esteemed” is tellingly passive. Esteemed by whom? Critics, donors, subscribers, gatekeepers who want the reassurance of recognition. Beresford lets the audience supply the authority, which mirrors the way repertory culture operates: legitimacy accrues through citation, not discovery. When he says the music “can stand” endless revival, he grants the works durability but also frames revival as a stress test - one that exposes how staging and interpretation can keep the familiar from curdling into museum theater.

The context is a late-20th/early-21st-century performance economy where “new work” carries financial and reputational risk, and the classics are endlessly re-packaged to feel contemporary. Beresford’s subtext isn’t anti-opera; it’s a director’s practical realism. The great operas survive because they’re structurally rich enough to take new readings, but also because institutions have made them the default language of “serious” music. The line praises resilience while winking at the conservatism that demands it.