Timothée Chalamet Opera/Ballet
This Timothée Chalamet “no one cares about opera and ballet” thing has unfolded in the most predictable way imaginable.
Instead of arts leaders and journalists trying to understand the root cause of his message, the immediate response has been defensive: “Come to our specific regional place of worship for these centuries-old traditions. We’re doing such innovative things with them. Just come, you’ll love it.”
Maybe. But Timothée probably would not have said he didn’t like opera or ballet if he had never attended a performance. He likely went at some point and did not have a great time.
What exactly is so threatening about that? How is he any different from the first-time attendee who never says a word, but simply never buys another ticket?
Are we uncomfortable because he has a platform and may have said out loud what countless first-time attendees keep to themselves?
Now that he has created a public conversation around this, which, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing, why not use the moment to actually understand what bothered him?
He did, in fact, hint at it.
Chalamet’s point was about popularity and visibility, not the artistic value of opera or ballet. He was arguing that movies, which are now themselves more than 100 years old and hardly a new art form, remain central in popular culture in a way opera and ballet often do not. He also acknowledged that attention spans are shorter now and likely to get even shorter.
Movies have adapted to that reality. They are built for longevity through sequels, spinoffs, franchises, merchandising, streaming libraries, fandom ecosystems, and constant cultural recirculation. Opera and ballet, by contrast, often remain either one-and-done experiences or repeated reinterpretations of the same canon, presented in ways that struggle to break through beyond their existing audiences.
So maybe the real question is not whether Timothée is wrong. Maybe the question is why the business model of opera and ballet has not evolved more aggressively to meet modern audiences where they are. Film certainly has, and yes, it has taken a financial toll on a lot of artists, but it has also opened a lot of new doors on streaming platforms that never existed before. Miniseries and limited series are just eight-hour films chunked out into one-hour increments. That must feel liberating for some screenwriters and directors whose original magnum opuses were edited down to fit a 95-minute time slot on the big screen at AMC.
One possible answer for live arts is a much more ambitious global co-production consortium.
Instead of a new work being produced by two or three companies and then largely disappearing, imagine 50 or 100 companies committing to present it live in cities and towns everywhere, followed by a Live in HD version that goes to theaters first and then becomes available on demand once the in-theater run is complete. And maybe, just maybe, it’s not a 3-hour+ opera with intermissions, but a limited series opera that takes over an entire season’s worth of productions, with each act representing a different part of the subscription package itself. If you're questioning this approach, just count the number of seats filled before intermission and then again after intermission.
Doesn't need to be only with new work either. Heck, every one of Wagner’s operas leaves you with an enormous cliffhanger at the end of each act. And with intermissions, some of his grandest can span six hours. That's six potential productions. Also, we’ve done this before. It's called double bills. Two short operas, one before intermission and one after. Cav/Pag doesn't need to be done together. Pagliacci can be its own standalone work in a subscription set. It's that good. And then a new composer could create a sequel, or a prequel, or a spinoff, as the second production in the series. For some reason we opera lovers empathize with this murderous clown. Why not run with that? What happened before? After? In an alternative universe? The possibilities are endless.
And yes, I can already hear the objections.
“The proscenium stages are all different.”
“You cannot build a transportable set that works in every house.”
“The union agreements would never allow it.”
“The media rights are too complicated.”
Really?
We put people into outer space. We built artificial intelligence. I am pretty sure human beings are capable of designing a production model that can work in both a 500-seat opera house and a 3,000-seat one. Creativity is not the barrier. Institutional inertia is.
And as for unions and electronic media agreements, sure, those are real constraints at the local level. But if everyone were aligned inside a major national or international consortium, with shared incentives and a coordinated strategy, those obstacles would suddenly look a lot more solvable.
Look, it is always easy to say, “That’s not how opera works,” or “That’s not how ballet works.”
Cool. How’s that business model working out for you?