I feel opera is an expression of artistic excellence. To do it is expensive, as there's a requirement for an o... — Michael Portillo

I feel opera is an expression of artistic excellence. To do it is expensive, as there's a requirement for an orchestra, good voices, excellent sets, and the fact that productions generally have only short runs. But I believe it's something we ought to achieve as a nation.

Author: Michael Portillo

Insight: There's something worth sitting with in this idea: that some things are worth doing precisely because they're expensive and difficult, not in spite of it. We live in an age obsessed with efficiency and ROI, where everything gets justified by audience numbers or streaming metrics. But opera—with its massive orchestras, its elaborate sets that might be used for only a handful of performances—represents something almost defiant about that logic. It says some expressions of human creativity deserve resources even when they don't "pay for themselves." The real tension here isn't about snobbery or elitism. It's about what a society chooses to fund and support. We fund highways, schools, hospitals—all essential. But we also fund things that purely enrich us: parks, museums, public broadcasting. Opera sits in that category. It requires excellence at every level—singers trained for decades, musicians in perfect coordination, designers at the top of their craft—and that coordination itself is part of what makes it matter. You can't phone it in. What's quietly radical about this view is that it trusts ordinary people to want genuine excellence in their lives, not just entertainment. It assumes we're capable of being moved by something demanding, something that requires us to show up and pay attention in a room with strangers. That's a different kind of cultural bet than we often make now.

Source: Private Passions, BBC Radio 3, 2009