Timothée Chalamet Has A Point about Opera and Ballet
Whether or not you’re tuned into it, Oscars season is a bizarre time of year. Starting in December and building up to the award show itself in March, the drama and gossip become increasingly silly as the tension builds. The internet whips itself into a frenzy over the smallest thing, and this year it was Timothée Chalamet saying that nobody cares about ballet or opera.
There are two things going on here. People generally want an ‘Oscar villain’, someone to collectively root against. In 2024 there was hate directed at Bradley Cooper for wearing a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. And of course we can’t forget Anne Hathaway in 2013, who was practically subjected to a witch hunt for the major sin of crying dramatically for winning a Best Supporting Actress award. So people really do like to blow absolutely everything out of proportion. I have to admit my reaction to Chalamet’s statement, like everyone else, was “what an insufferable idiot”, but since he has opened a can of worms, why not delve into it?
In a video interview with Matthew McConaughey for Variety, Timothée Chalamet said that he doesn’t want film to become a niche artform like opera or ballet, due to the decline in people going to the cinema. Naturally, the internet blew up over this, with many professional singers and dancers defending their artform. But if you are a non-professional, and were offended by what Chalamet said, ask yourself this: when was the last time you went to a ballet or opera? Do we, as a society, actually care about ballet and opera or do we just want to jump on the bandwagon? I’ll hold my hand up and say that I haven’t been to one since 2018. In a YouTube video by The Reasonable Music Review, the author points out that Chalamet did not say he hates ballet or opera and thinks they’re stupid, he said he doesn’t want cinema to become a niche and elitist artform. No matter how much people say that ballet, opera or any other classical art are accessible, they are nowhere near as accessible as cinema. A quick look at prices for Mayerling at the Royal Ballet shows that they sell for £52-£171 each, whilst tickets at my local cinema cost around £10 and the cheapest tickets at my local multiplex cost £4.99. So it’s obvious which medium is going to attract more people. But it’s not just the prices that put people off, it’s also the atmosphere.
During my time at university in London, I went to a few ballets at the Royal Opera House, and although the experiences I had were pretty magical, I can see why people would be put off. First off, there’s the idea that you have to be ‘educated’ to attend these performances. There have been occasions where I’ve been to prestigious ballets and, even though I already knew most of the plot and who the cast were, I still felt intimidated by the dominance of middle and upper-class people loudly pontificating their thoughts. It’s true that you can get these types of people everywhere, but it’s already a known stereotype in the classical world. Opera and ballet also have a huge racism problem. Take Verdi’s Otello, an opera based on Shakespeare’s Othello, in which the race of the titular character is pretty well known to be a major plot point. Yet it took until 2022 for the role to be performed by a Black singer, American tenor Russell Thomas, at the Royal Opera. The role has also been notorious for white singers wearing blackface, which the Metropolitan Opera in New York put a stop to in 2015. With ballet, there has been a reckoning with certain racist tropes in productions such as The Nutcracker. Back in 2015, I saw a Royal Ballet livestream of The Nutcracker at the cinema. Everything was fine until it got to the Chinese and Arabian dances. The depictions of exoticised ‘belly-dancing’ and Fu Manchu moustaches with ‘funny’ hopping was something I thought I’d never see in the modern era. Thankfully, more companies are taking the initiative to fix these problems. However, it’s taken so long to get to this point that a lot of modern audiences could already be turned off by the idea of going to see a traditional ballet or opera. There are also so many issues with sexism, traditional gender binaries and body-shaming and abuse in ballet. It's no wonder it’s struggling to draw in new audiences. Yes, this is also true for film, but as an already exclusive art form, ballet does itself no favours by continuing these practices in the name of tradition.
Although there is a lot of catching up to do, there’s also a lot of hope. One of my favourite dance companies, Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, has been consistently putting out fresh and groundbreaking work since 1987. Swan Lake is probably the company’s most well-known work, with its flock of aggressive and malicious male swans replacing the usual fragile corps de ballet. This is also true for companies like Ballet Black, which is made up of Black and Asian dancers, and Candoco, which puts disabled dancers to the forefront. Meanwhile, Scottish Ballet are shaking up gender stereotypes with productions like Cinders!, in which Cinderella and her suitor are played by both male and female dancers, alongside their female Drosselmyer in The Nutcracker. With that in mind, there really is no excuse for companies not to move forward with more progressive casting and productions that will attract a wider audience.
Although Chalamet’s comments might have been worded badly, I hope it does bring about a dialogue in which classical artforms can be seen as a welcoming space for all instead of an elitist space for a select few. Of course, there will always be an element of prestige, and that’s okay. Watching the lights go down and the curtain come up in an opulent theatre is a very special feeling. I believe it’s something everyone should get to experience at least once in their lives. We just need the right people to start asking how these spaces can be made welcoming and accessible.
Written by Madeleine Atropa
