The chief executive of Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) has said ticket sales got an “immediate boost” following Timothee Chalamet’s controversial comments about the art forms.
The Marty Supreme actor faced a backlash for claiming that “no-one cares” about ballet and opera.
RBO chief Alex Beard said the reaction gave his institution a huge boost and offered thanks for the Hollywood star.
He told The Times: “The public reaction was just fantastic.
“I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet.
“We simply said ‘Take a look at what we’re doing, mate’ — for instance, the fact that the largest portion of our audience by age is 20 to 30-year-olds.
“And you know what? Our post got two-and-a-half million engagements and half a million shares, just on Instagram. And our ticket sales got an immediate boost. So cheers, Timmy!”
In a conversation with actor Matthew McConaughey about the future of cinema for CNN and US outlet Variety, Chalamet said: “I admire people, and I’ve done it myself, doing a talk show about, how we’ve got to keep movie theatres alive, you know, we got to keep this genre alive.
“Another part of me feels like, if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they’re going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘hey, keep this thing alive’, even though no-one cares about this any more.
“All respect to the ballet and opera people out there, I just lost 14 cents in viewership, I just took shots for no reason.”
Opera and ballet companies on both sides of the Atlantic reacted to Chalamet’s remarks and Royal Ballet and Opera posted footage on Instagram of its craftspeople and performers and wrote: “Every night at the Royal Opera House, thousands of people gather for ballet and opera. For the music. For the storytelling. For the sheer magic of live performance. If you’d like to reconsider, (Timothee Chalamet), our doors are open.”
The English National Opera also invited Chalamet to a performance while the Seattle Opera made headlines for offering 14% off tickets for its production of Carmen with the promo code Timothee.
The Metropolitan Opera’s official TikTok account shared a montage video of the cast and crew working hard behind the scenes preparing for a production, captioning the clip: “All respect to the opera (and ballet) people out there.”
