Quick, name seven major ballet and opera stars. If you rattled off a list with Jonas Kaufmann, Anna Netrebko, Misty Copeland and Marianela Nuñez, you’re a serious arts fan. Congratulations. If you sat scratching your head, you’re far from alone. Now, list seven major Hollywood actors working today. I bet your head is swimming with so many names that you don’t know where to start.
One name you might begin with is Timothée Chalamet — the lanky 30-year-old celebrity who people currently love to hate. Chalamet was just a few weeks ago considered the frontrunner to win this year’s lead actor Oscar for playing a cocky young ping-pong star in “Marty Supreme,” but has since experienced a rapid downward trajectory in rank thanks to his growing reputation for being a cocky young movie star — with extra demerits for dating Kylie Jenner.
Chalamet generated extra antipathy over the weekend (although Oscar voting had closed by then) with remarks he made about the arts during a Variety and CNN town hall with Matthew McConaughey in February. During that conversation, which reached 8.35 million people worldwide, Chalamet told McConaughey how much he appreciated people who were working to keep movie theaters alive at a time when streaming has been undercutting that experience.
He then pivoted to a performing arts mic drop, “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey! Keep this thing alive.’ Even though it’s like no one cares about this anymore.”
He laughed before making it worse, “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there … I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I’m taking shots for no reason.”
Let’s stop for a moment to appreciate the numbers at play here. A conversation between two Hollywood celebrities reached more than 8 million people globally, and Chalamet noted that if all his opera and ballet fans stopped loving him he would lose 14 cents in viewership. Double ouch. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “It’s sad ‘cause it’s true.”
Before you throw tomatoes at me, hear me out. I’m not saying that no one cares about opera or ballet — and Chalamet shouldn’t have said it either — but I am saying that compared with the outrageously oversized presence that Hollywood celebrity holds in the public imagination, the performing arts really are an afterthought. And that hurts. It’s why Chalamet’s comments made hard-working, underpaid, zealously devoted artists and arts fans ugly cry.
I’m a longtime arts writer, and if I had a dollar for every time an executive, director, performer or writer in opera, ballet, theater or classical music told me that their art form has a “youth” problem, I’d be a rich woman. The fine arts have long struggled with a so-called graying audience, and have moved mountains to innovate in ways that keep the genres fresh in order to attract younger, excitable crowds.
They’ve been succeeding too. Here in Los Angeles, Yuval Sharon’s avant-garde opera company, the Industry, helped launch a veritable new opera revolution and launched Sharon’s career into the stratosphere — he is now making his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, which has already sold out. And Nederlands Dans Theater is smashing classical ballet conventions, while Paris Opéra Ballet and New York City Ballet remain powerhouses to contend with.
Chalamet himself benefited greatly from familiarity with the world of ballet. His mother and sister both studied at the School of American Ballet, and he was raised in a rich performing arts milieu. Acting, as Chalamet has shown time and again, is as much about a lithe and flexible body as it is about an emotive psyche.
None of which takes away from the fact that attendance for opera and ballet in America is low — making both art forms incredibly niche. According to recent industry reports, ticket sales to American operas and ballets hover between 1.4 to 3 million each, depending on the year. Compare those numbers with the average 19 million viewers who tune into the Academy Awards on a single night each year. The same number of people who will be either actively rooting for a Chalamet win or hate-watching for his loss.
Also telling: My hot take on Chalamet’s hot take on opera and ballet will likely be more clicked on than any number of stories I’ve written over the years about opera and ballet.
Again, please don’t launch that tomato. I’m not the one doing the clicking. You are.
