Timothée Chalamet said ‘no one cares’ about opera and ballet. He should get to Philadelphia more often.
Full houses show that the actor is "out of touch," one arts leader says. Another offered him voice lessons whenever he wants.
From the department of weirdly random, gratuitously hurtful actor observations about the world, Timothée Chalamet has informed us that opera and ballet are passé:
“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 anymore.’ All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.”
After suggesting that both art forms were wanting for support during a talk with actor Matthew McConaughey at a Variety and CNN town hall in University of Texas at Austin, the American and French actor joked: “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
Chalamet then mimicked an opera singer, the event video shows.
Opera and ballet figures all over have seized on his comments, and Philadelphia — where both opera and ballet fill the hall regularly — would like to have a word with the 30-year-old actor.
“I am a huge Timothée Chalamet fan, and I was shocked,” said Christine Cox, artistic and executive director of BalletX. “It was so dismissive and hurtful of entire industries. I see generations of people coming to this art form. We shouldn’t be putting each other down, we should be lifting each other up.”
BalletX’s spring run of seven performances this month are nearly sold out, Cox pointed out.
Philadelphia Ballet chief executive officer Shelly Power said that “Mr. Chalamet is obviously living outside the majority of the ballet world and out of touch. If his comments were true, why are our ticket sales and attendance numbers hitting all-time highs? We saw 10,000 more patrons from 2024 to 2025 in The Nutcracker alone.”
The company premiered its The Merry Widow Thursday night.
Its subscriber base, Power said, has returned to pre-pandemic numbers.
This season, most Opera Philadelphia performances have sold out or sold close to capacity. General director and president Anthony Roth Costanzo said that “in terms of whether I agree that no one cares about it, no, obviously I don’t agree with that as someone who cares about it a lot.”
But Costanzo says he prefers to focus on the underlying question of how to get even more people to care about both opera and film.
“Timothée was talking about making film as relevant as it can be, and in that context, he said that he didn’t want to work in something that wasn’t relevant, to try and make it more relevant, and that’s what I’m doing. So in a way I feel allied. He’s just saying that he doesn’t want to do it in a medium that’s more difficult, so I guess he’s a little bit more of a wimp than I am.”
BalletX’s Cox said that Chalamet’s comments were surprising coming from someone whose mother, Nicole Flender, was a Broadway dancer, and someone who attended a performing arts high school. Chalamet attended New York City’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.
“I bet you he’s going to be at a ballet soon, because he’s going to have to fix this,” Cox said.
As for Chalamet mimicking an opera singer during his talk with McConaughey, Costanzo has an idea.
“I invite him to star in an opera whenever he wants. Because after he said that, I saw some contrition as he tried to then sing an operatic note. And I thought, ‘Okay, there’s some promise there.’ So if he wants voice lessons, I’m available.”