Timothée Chalamet loses Oscar traction after commenting on the ballet opera

Timothée Chalamet is facing a backlash this week and has lost his grip on the best actor Oscar race by simply stating the most obvious thing in the world: Nobody cares about ballet or opera in 2026.

Here’s a direct quote from the star of “Dune” and “Marty Supreme” during a recent CNN town hall: “I don’t want to work on ballet, or opera, or things like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though nobody seems to care.’ Respect to all ballet and opera people out there.”

The retreat was swift and fierce. According to the BBC, the Canadian mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny described Chalamet’s comment as “a disappointing take” while, the American artist Franz Szony wrote, “Two ancient art forms that have existed for centuries, both of which require an enormous amount of talent and discipline that this man will never have.”

But to today’s Hollywood good boy, who are these people?

When I was 10 years old, the greatest ballet dancer in the world was Mikhail Baryshnikov. He was as famous as Larry Bird or Doc Gooden, as the greatest opera singer of the time, Luciano Pavarotti. That is gone today.

Today, almost no American has the faintest idea who the greatest ballet dancer or opera singer is alive, because they don’t exist anymore. The art of fair play has become a bubble of persistent intolerance. They don’t even want us to be unwashed, unbelievers, and involved.

The art of excellence is the last ditch where sadistic wokesters hunt.

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In the 1950s, collections of major Western works were published. You may have seen some of these leather-bound scrolls in your grandparents’ homes. They were expensive, but publishers couldn’t print them fast enough.

The middle class ate it up.

On any given night in those 1950s and 1960s on television, one could see a Shakespeare play, or Leonard Bernstein interpreting symphonies or the great philosophers of the day lecturing. But in the 1970s, it was decided that this was too small for the masses.

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The Pavarottis and Baryshnikovs would last through the 1990s, but by the turn of the millennium, that was over. Leftists had given opera and ballet their private power, a declining and dying domain that Chalamet rightly called.

Workers installed Donald J. Trump above the current signs at the Kennedy Center on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)

The problem with opera and ballet, and indeed with straight theater and music as well, is that they stop looking for audiences and start looking for grants. A bunch of woke, rich white people can give you money to produce the first Inuit opera but it doesn’t mean anyone wants to see it.

That includes the Inuits.

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Part of what Chalamet realizes here is that opera and ballet have spent 50 years being protected. But who are you protected from?

The intention to change and move away from the mainstream music that everyone loves has — for some reason — made these art forms a tender flower for the elite among us, not a strong plant that feeds the souls of the masses.

Now, the same people who refuse to attend their so-called favorite opera and ballet will not like the theater department of the Trump Kennedy Center as their protest, the result of which is that there are now no audiences for these forms.

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It is sad that opera and ballet may indeed be dead. There may be no one left in those art forms who can breathe life back into their resurrected corpses, but Chamamet knows that maybe movies can avoid this fate. It is possible.

I suspect Hollywood’s new non-offensive “it guy” will make a comeback, making me yearn for the days of filmmakers like John Cassavettes who could tell the industry and the elite to stick where the sun never shines.

But his point stands. It is nonsense to even argue. Ballet and opera made themselves irrelevant by imposing shibboleths on awakening and obeying its rules. Until that ends, they will always die.

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I think Chalamet probably learned his lesson here, and his punishment may stick. But they can’t blame us, and when they want to invite us back to art, we’ll be there.

But the makers and movers of opera, ballet, theater, painting and sculpture should be warned that while you are destroying your centuries-old legacy, we may be starting our own.

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