Quick, name seven major ballet and opera stars. If you rattled off a list with Jonas Kaufmann, Anna Netrebko, Misty Copeland and Marianela Nu\u00f1ez, you\u2019re a serious arts fan. Congratulations. If you sat scratching your head, you\u2019re far from alone. Now, list seven major Hollywood actors working today. I bet your head is swimming with so many names that you don\u2019t know where to start.<\/p>\n
One name you might begin with is Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet \u2014 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\u2019s lead actor Oscar for playing a cocky young ping-pong star in \u201cMarty Supreme,\u201d but has since experienced a rapid downward trajectory in rank thanks to his growing reputation for being a cocky young movie star \u2014 with extra demerits for dating Kylie Jenner.<\/p>\n
Chalamet generated additional 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,<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n He then pivoted to a performing arts mic drop, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it\u2019s like, \u2018Hey! Keep this thing alive.\u2019 Even though it\u2019s like no one cares about this anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n He laughed before making it worse, \u201cAll respect to the ballet and opera people out there \u2026 I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I\u2019m taking shots for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s 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, \u201cIt\u2019s sad \u2018cause it\u2019s true.\u201d <\/p>\n Before you throw tomatoes at me, hear me out. I\u2019m not saying that no one cares about opera or ballet \u2014 and Chalamet shouldn\u2019t have said it either \u2014 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\u2019s why Chalamet\u2019s comments made hard-working, underpaid, zealously devoted artists and arts fans ugly cry.<\/p>\n I\u2019m 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 \u201cyouth\u201d problem, I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n They\u2019ve been succeeding too. Here in Los Angeles, Yuval Sharon\u2019s avant-garde opera company, the Industry, helped launch a veritable new opera revolution and propelled Sharon\u2019s career into the stratosphere \u2014 he is now making his debut at the Metropolitan Opera<\/a>, which has already sold out<\/a>. And Nederlands Dans Theater is smashing classical ballet conventions, while Paris Op\u00e9ra Ballet and New York City Ballet remain powerhouses to contend with.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n None of which takes away from the fact that attendance for opera and ballet in America is low \u2014 making both art forms incredibly niche. According to recent industry reports,<\/a> ticket sales to American operas and ballets hover between 1.4 to 3 million each, depending on the year.<\/a> Compare those numbers with the average 19 million viewers<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Also telling: My hot take on Chalamet\u2019s hot take on opera and ballet will likely be more clicked on than any number of stories I\u2019ve written over the years about opera<\/a> and ballet<\/a>.<\/p>\n Again, please don\u2019t launch that tomato. I\u2019m not the one doing the clicking. You are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quick, name seven major ballet and opera stars. 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