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Timothée Chalamet thinks no one cares about opera or ballet. He told Matthew McConaughey so. Also, the entire world.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more’,” Chalamet said in a recorded conversation for Variety.
It’s fair to say his follow-up “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there” didn’t land. His PR team have likely been brainstorming responses to the inevitable red-carpet challenges at Sunday night’s Academy Awards (which has since confirmed ballerina Misty Copeland, who rebuked his comments, as a performer). The Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli has publicly invited Chalamet to one of his concerts. Coming soon to an algorithm near you: Chalamet shedding tears to Nessun Dorma.
Chalamet is wrong about no one caring, obviously. New York’s Metropolitan Opera’s response on TikTok highlighted the legions of creatives it takes to put on a show. UK’s Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) insisted that “thousands of people” fill its auditoriums nightly. Performers and fans across the world denounced Chalamet’s comment and him with it.
What the big organisations in the UK failed to mention is that dwindling audience numbers post-Covid have led to significantly fewer stage shows being produced, meaning more people in the industry are out of work. It may be an awkward truth, but opera and ballet are going the way of stamp-collecting, churchgoing and blacksmithing, and appreciation alone will not rescue them.
If as many people who’ve labelled Chalamet uncultured bought a ticket, opera and ballet wouldn’t be in this mess. Clearly there’s a difference between virtue signalling about art and doing what’s required to keep it alive.
I’ve heard more about opera and ballet over the last week than the past 10 years, and much of the discourse has left a sour taste. A snobbery arises, a stock response along the lines of, “the music is beautiful, you must be ignorant”, ensuring any opportunity for discussion or progress is silenced by shame. No one wants to look stupid. Or, let’s be honest, poor. “It’s the difference between taking your girl to Nobu or McDonalds,” ballet dancer Amar Smalls said on Instagram in defence of extortionate ticket prices.
Perhaps it would be most useful to accept Chalamet’s remark not as an insult from a Hollywood upstart, but feedback from a young person – the exact demographic opera and ballet need to survive.
It’s not for want of trying. The English National Opera offers free tickets to under-21s. Every season, Young RBO takes over the auditorium at the Royal Opera House offering 16- to 25-year-old members the chance to buy tickets for under £30. The problem is that this all relies heavily on the young people already having an interest or at least being curious enough to take them up. For La Bohème or Giselle to be more appealing than, say, streaming, scrolling, gaming, going to the park, going to the pub, doing literally anything else.
I wasn’t raised on opera or ballet, and as a working-class kid both forms were worlds away. When I was an usher at the Norwich Theatre Royal and Glyndebourne was touring, the place might as well have been invaded by posh aliens. We used to take all but the most expensive wine out of the bar fridges. I got the message. It wasn’t for the likes of me.
But for one glorious moment, it was. In 2011 the Royal Opera House premiered Anna Nicole by the same librettist as the National Theatre smash Jerry Springer: The Opera. It was the first time I bought a ticket. And also the last, as despite its commercial success and brilliant reviews nothing as audacious or very clearly pitched to an unconventional audience has been produced there since.
Yet in this world of competing screens, it’s audacity and inventiveness that get bums on seats. Theatre, my industry, finally seems to be understanding it’s an expensive night out and new audiences won’t take a punt if it sounds even remotely boring. On Wednesday it was announced that Quentin Tarantino was crashing in (feet first) to save the West End by writing and directing a new play in 2027. Recently appointed artistic directors are making bold moves at the Almeida, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company – the website of which will probably crash when tickets for George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel goes on sale in April. I’m not suggesting we wipe the slate clean of Shakespeare. But blockbuster programming alongside the classics will drive the dosh to help theatres endure.
And speaking of blockbusters. Last year UK cinema box-office revenue reached a post-pandemic high. And of all Hollywood actors, it’s arguably Chalamet who gets his hands dirtiest hyping the form. The Marty Supreme press tour went on full blast: fake Zoom calls in character, bodyguards with giant ping-pong balls for heads, guest appearances in rap videos. Call it annoying or ingenious, it broadened the movie’s appeal to an audience beyond niche cinephiles and Marty Supreme became A24’s highest-grossing movie ever in the UK.
So what’s a struggling art form to do? Maybe the Met should stop clutching its pearls, pick up the phone and commission Lady Gaga to write a female Don Giovanni. Bad Bunny: The Ballet? I’m being glib – but also, why not? A simpler solution for now would be for opera and ballet to accept that to thrive for centuries to come, they’ll need to stop finger-wagging and start listening.
And perhaps thank Timothée for the conversation starter.
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Rebecca Humphries is an actor and author
