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Every generation seems to produce someone ready to declare opera and ballet irrelevant. And yet, century after century, these art forms continue to endure – evolving, expanding and moving audiences in ways few artistic traditions ever have.
In a recent interview, Timothée Chalamet mocked at why we should “keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more” (Don’t denounce Timothée Chalamet for what he said about opera and ballet – prove him wrong, 14 March). It is the kind of reductive take one hears when popularity is mistaken for cultural value.
Opera and ballet have survived wars, revolutions, censorship and centuries of cultural upheaval – not because they are relics, but because they are among the most physically and emotionally demanding art forms.
Opera singers train for decades to produce sound powerful enough to carry over a full orchestra in theatres designed centuries before amplification existed. Ballet dancers push the limits of human anatomy until music itself seems to take physical form. These are not outdated art forms – they are living ones, constantly reinterpreted and continually evolving.
Entire communities of artists collaborate to bring them to life: orchestras, conductors, composers, choreographers, designers and technicians. Hundreds of people working together to create something that exists only in a single moment shared with an audience. And when it works, it moves audiences to tears – without retakes, without CGI and without editing.
Artists, of all people, should understand the devotion it takes to master an art form. When they mock another discipline, they are not exposing its irrelevance – they are exposing their own ignorance.
Opera and ballet are not obsolete. They remain among the most complex, disciplined and beautiful artistic achievements our kind has ever produced. What is outdated is the idea that art must be trendy to matter.
Seán Tester
Opera singer
Rebecca Humphries is right that finger-wagging won’t save opera. Fortunately, up north, we’re too busy filling seats to do much wagging. At Opera North, audiences are growing – and growing younger. In our 2026-27 season we’re expanding from four productions to seven, and we’re forecasting a new high in annual revenue. Not bad for an art form “nobody” cares about.
Recently we opened the doors to more than 1,200 first-time opera goers in a single “pay what you can” performance of La Bohème – many of them young, many of them working-class, almost none of them “posh aliens”. It was a triumph.
Timothée Chalamet’s comments stung the sector, but perhaps they shouldn’t have surprised it. The answer isn’t pearl-clutching – it’s exactly what Rebecca describes: audacity, accessibility and a willingness to meet new audiences.
Michael Wilkinson
Director of strategy, Opera North
Rebecca Humphries and Emma Brockes (Digested week: Geopolitics and package holidays collide, and Chalamet goes too far, 13 March) write engagingly in support of opera and ballet. What neither mention is education, and how school music and dance departments are constantly fighting for resources, staffing and funding. At higher education level we see the results of endless neglect in school arts provision. Yes, we need attractive new shows commissioned for major houses, but people need to be exposed to music and dance at school for a lifelong interest – or profession – to develop. This means funding for teachers and equipment.
Politicians who dismiss arts degrees probably watch Netflix shows in their spare time, never once asking themselves who made them and how those creatives learned their trade; they certainly don’t understand how they are all connected by networks of arts education. Healthy opera and ballet companies, and wide engagement in them, are symptoms of a culture that values the arts in schools.
Dr Alexis Bennett
Goldsmiths, University of London
