Bruce Beresford

With Cold Sassy Tree having its first production, I saw no necessity to do anything other than produce it with the correct setting.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.

On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through.

In silent movies, they tended to put the camera down, and everybody walked in front of it and acted, and then they all walked off. Cutting was quite infrequent.

In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film.

For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.

Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.

He's wrong. That's why his films look so terrible.

I didn't get upset because I wasn't nominated, but I was a little surprised.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

At HBO, they seem to be well-informed. They make what I think are really quite mature films.

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.

Tender Mercies is a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like five times all of my Australian films combined.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.

Perhaps the most difficult thing is shooting scenes set 6,000 feet up in the mountains of Mexico.