This might come as a surprise to you, but there are classic killers out there. Not killers who kill in a “classic” way (if there’s even such a thing) but killers who kill classics. Can you imagine a graveyard filled with remarkable books that died when turned into terrible movies, fantastic films ruined by dreadful remakes, and excellent operas killed by uninspired modernisations? Indeed, it must be a big one. 

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Classics take many forms—books, songs, paintings, and even the artists themselves as public figures. Some works become classics overnight, like Picasso’s Guernica or Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, which were acclaimed from the start and never lost their appeal. Others take longer to be recognised. But, regardless of how they get there, all classics share one distinguished trait: people keep loving them. Then, how can anyone be so cruel as to kill something cherished by the many? 

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One possible reason is that people are just mean. Who knows, maybe Pablo Larraín was traumatised by Maria Callas’ voice and, out of spite, decided to try and ruin her legacy with his dull biopic Maria—starring Angelina Jolie, a classic herself. But the more likely explanation is that Larraín didn’t set out to destroy the classic; instead, he simply failed to understand it. In other words, he missed the essential things that make Callas, well, Callas.

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Not knowing where and how to find the essence of an artist or an artwork is the number-one reason classics get unintentionally killed. Nowhere is this more obvious than in opera, an art form that relies heavily on its classics. At least 80% of operas performed worldwide are masterpieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries—Carmen, La Traviata, La Bohème, The Marriage of Figaro, and so on. These works are staged year after year, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Opera houses, like many other art businesses, face a dilemma: for a classic to remain famous, it has to be continuously reproduced, but how to do that without killing it? 

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There’s a long-standing debate about whether the essence of an artwork lies in its intrinsic qualities (form, structure, craftsmanship) or in the experience it creates for its audience. One side suggests we should focus on what the work is and not so much on what it does to us. For example, analysing the complex narrative, structure, and historical depth of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, despite how much readers enjoy it. The other view argues that a work is best examined for the experience it creates—how it resonates emotionally or intellectually. Either way, the essence of a classic lies somewhere in these qualities; the only thing remaining is to look for it. 

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And so, to keep a classic alive, one must identify its essential components and hold them sacred. This applies to classics that are being reproduced and altered in some way. Of course, the other option is to abstain from modifying anything and simply present the original. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great way to look after a classic. Take the film Casablanca, released in 1942 and never altered—not even a single frame. In the 1980s, there was an attempt to colourise it, and in the 2000s, Madonna wanted to remake it with herself in the leading role. Both times, fans and industry professionals intervened, preventing what would have been a terrible murder. They understood that the essence of Casablanca lies in the singularity of its moment, and moments, once passed, can’t be repeated.

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A favourite word among classic killers is ‘modernisation,’ a technique that sits uncomfortably between plain reproduction and bold reinvention. It typically changes the form of a work but rarely keeps its essence, resulting in something without character—neither faithful to the original nor groundbreaking in its own right. This mistake is common among directors who think that a successful way to present a classic is guaranteed solely by new costumes, modern technology, or a famous cast. 

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Going back to Larraín’s Maria, film critic Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker that the movie “gets lost in a tangle of clichéd bio-pic narrative stuffing.” Why would a film about Maria Callas—one of opera’s most dramatic and fascinating figures—need any stuffing at all? Well, this might just be another example of how to kill a classic.