Timothée Who? An Overly Earnest Reaction to the Arts’ Public Enemy Number One
I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone get under the collective skin of the classical performing arts community the way Timothée Chalamet has with his recent comments on the relevance of opera and ballet. I will admit that my algorithm and networks heavily favor these circles, but the backlash has permeated far enough that it feels like something of a cultural moment. It's exciting to witness because, in my experience, most instances of unity like this one have arisen in response to some great ill committed within the industry. And often these ills are seen as unavoidable byproducts of one of the most basic facts about us: we're old. Classical arts have been around a long time, and they shoulder the burdens of any medium that finds its origins in a very different world. I’m not just talking about the dead white guy problem, though we’re still working on that. Classical arts were born of a world with different demands on people’s attention, different education,...
