So Timothée Chalamet said ballet and opera are arts “no one cares about,” and honestly, the response was chef’s kiss. Not in a flattering way for him, though. The internet basically watched an entire artistic community stand up and say, “Actually, we’re doing just fine without your validation,” and it was kind of beautiful.
The whole thing blew up last week when ballet dancers, opera singers, and basically anyone who’s dedicated their life to these “old” art forms decided they weren’t going to let some actor dismiss centuries of tradition because it doesn’t generate TikTok clout. Andrea Bocelli weighed in. Misty Copeland clapped back. And then everyday artists started flooding social media with videos of their performances, basically saying, “Here’s what ‘nobody cares about’ actually looks like.”
The Real Issue Isn’t About Fame
Here’s what Stefanie Renee Salyers, a New York-based dancer, pointed out: Chalamet seems to think art only matters if it makes you rich or Instagram-famous. That’s not how art works, and frankly, that’s a weirdly American problem.
“The value of art is intrinsic to the art itself, not how much money or fame it can get you,” Salyers told HuffPost. She wasn’t bitter about it either. She was just… right. Most professional artists in ballet and opera aren’t doing it for the paychecks or the red carpet moments. They’re doing it because they love it, which is wild to consider in a society that measures worth almost entirely through earnings potential.
Salyers also made a sharp observation about how the U.S. has a “really weird relationship with anything that’s not a capitalist project.” Germany, France, and Finland? They fund the arts heavily at government levels. Russia? Ballet dancers are celebrities on the street. But here, artists often juggle multiple side jobs just to keep studying and performing their craft.
The Arts Are Actually Thriving (Chalamet Just Wasn’t Paying Attention)
The San Francisco Ballet, one of the country’s most prestigious companies, saw its revenue grow by over 40% in the last three years. Interest in ballet training among kids is higher than ever. So either Chalamet didn’t do his homework, or he was talking about something else entirely.
Tamara Rojo, the artistic director at SF Ballet and a former lead principal dancer, kept it classy. She basically said the company is too busy thriving to be bothered by dismissive comments. “We know who we are. We know what we represent,” she said. That’s confidence that comes from actual success, not from dunking on actors on Twitter.
But here’s the thing Rojo also emphasized: creative industries have struggled post-pandemic, sure. But performing arts? They might actually be more important now than ever. Live performances do something streaming content can’t touch. There’s no edit button, no second take. Everything happens in real time, and that rawness, that risk of imperfection, is part of what makes it thrilling.
Why Ballet and Opera Still Matter
Soula Parassidis, an operatic soprano, said Chalamet was judging art “by the wrong metrics.” She makes a distinction most people miss: some things are made for consumption, while others help form us as human beings. Mozart and Verdi didn’t endure for 300 years because people were trying to keep them “artificially alive out of habit.” They endured because their work still helps us understand ourselves.
Opera and ballet also offer something unique in a world of heavily edited, highly produced content. You get to witness intense discipline, memory, physical control, and emotional intelligence all happening live, in front of you, with zero post-production magic. Every performance is different. Every night is alive in a way that movies and TV shows fundamentally aren’t.
Training to become an opera singer is basically like training to be an elite athlete, by the way. Most people don’t realize singers don’t use microphones. They project their voices entirely through physical power and technique. That’s not a hobby. That’s a career that demands the same level of commitment as becoming a professional athlete, except it pays way less and gets way less respect.
Getting Started If You Actually Care
If you want to experience ballet or opera without feeling completely lost, all three women recommended the same starting point: Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.” It’s short, it’s festive, it’s fun. After that, “Swan Lake,” “Coppelia,” and “Giselle” are solid choices.
For entertainment that’s new to opera, “Carmen,” “Don Giovanni,” and “La Bohème” offer strong drama and iconic music that hit emotionally right away. These 18th and 19th-century works have endured for a reason, and most local opera companies are probably performing something classic this season.
The larger point everyone kept circling back to was that arts and creativity matter, especially now. Kids entering a world full of uncertainty and unpredictable technology need to develop imagination, entrepreneurial thinking, emotional resilience, and self-expression. That’s what the arts give you. That’s what ballet and opera are actually for.
Chalamet might have thought he was making a hot take. Instead, he accidentally reminded everyone why these art forms have been around for centuries and why they’re not going anywhere. Sometimes the best thing a dismissal can do is prove itself wrong.
