Rumors of the Demise of Opera Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It all started when Timothée Chalamet, most of whose female family danced at the New York City Ballet, declared in a CNN interview with Matthew McConaughey, “I don’t wanna be working in ballet, or opera, or… things where it’s like, hey keep this thing alive, even though it’s like no one cares about this anymore.” Mr. Chalamet’s playfully provocative words, delivered with a gentle smile, elicited an immediate “Yeah, yeah, yeah” from Mr. McConaughey and knowing audience laughter.Krakatoa-like aftershocks followed, particularly in the opera world. Opera has long been the whipping boy of the anti-elitist crowd, an art form often perceived as arcane and priced beyond the wallet of the average Joe. In the UK, Arts Council England has made it a badge of honor to reduce grants to opera companies, forcing Glyndebourne to cut its touring company and English National Opera to relocate from London to Manchester.In America, where private sponsorship is key, major houses are not putting on as many productions: 17 in the 2026-27 season at the Metropolitan Opera, as opposed to 20 in 2025-26. San Francisco has reduced its productions for those seasons from 8 to 6. It’s easy to see how Mr. Chalamet struck a nerve.Contributing to the fallout from Mr. Chalamet’s provocation was the distinguished fashion designer and opera buff Vivek Nagrani. Mr. Nagrani penned a jeremiad in the Sun against those who dare to attend the Met in casual attire. So disgusted was Mr. Nagrani that he left a performance of “Madama Butterfly” before the end, lamenting that, “The opera experience used to be an act of mutual respect, one where performers gave their brilliance and audiences in turn responded with presence, attention and decorum.”But attention and decorum need not be incompatible with leisurewear. I’ve attended performances where smartly-dressed audience members whisper loudly and check their phones while jean-clad students sit enthralled, unphased by the behaviour of “better-dressed” fellow opera-goers.Writing recently in the Daily Telegraph, Stephen Pollard commented on the appalling whiffs he frequently encounters at the opera: “The man on my left – smartly dressed, shiny shoes, trim haircut – had body odour (BO) so potent that it could have closed the Strait of Hormuz on its own.” Would Mr. Nagrani have stayed to watch the death of Cio Cio San by seppuku in “Madama Butterfly” if his nostrils rather than his eyes were being assailed? He concluded his article in haughty agreement with Mr. Chalamet: “Perhaps he was right — the opera is dead.” What my fellow Sun contributor perhaps meant was the death of opera as he would like it to be, or as it once was. Opera has had to adapt to survive, and the truth is it has done so successfully. For example Boston Lyric Opera is at the vanguard of companies finding new and younger audiences, taking opera outside the theatre to warehouses and civic spaces, making the city itself a central player, much as the late, great, Sir Graham Vick did in the UK with Birmingham Opera Company.The author as King of Clubs, with Anton Saris, in Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Love for Three Oranges,’ in a production for Opera Zuid in 1995. Mark GlanvilleIt turns out Mr. Chalamet’s intervention has actually helped opera, not hindered it. Speaking to The Times in response to Mr. Chalamet’s comments, the Chief Executive of the Royal Ballet and Opera, Alex Beard, 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 letter to the Guardian, the Director of Strategy at the UK’s Opera North, Michael Wilkinson, vaunted the company’s expansion from 4 to 7 new productions in the 26-27 season, stating, “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.”Most of my UK operatic colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s came from working-class backgrounds. Choral traditions linked to mining communities and voices nurtured in family sing-songs around the piano furnished opera houses with a steady supply of voices, especially from regions like Wales and the north of England where vowels are more open and pure.When singing the King, who only appears in the first half, for Opera North in Verdi’s “Aida,” I would sometimes remove my robes, unglue my beard, and join those at the other side of the footlights. There I found a different, generally middle-class, well-heeled breed. Was it that many working-class people were led to believe opera was not for them? Paradoxically, an art form populated by artists from working-class backgrounds seemed less successful in attracting them as an audience.But when my ex-wife, Julia Melinek, sang the title role in “Madam Butterfly” for English National Opera, I watched from the company box alongside members of my soccer club Millwall’s “Nutty Turn Out” hooligan firm of supporters. They loved every minute, “Butterfly”‘s passion not entirely unfamiliar to regulars in the stands at Millwall’s Den stadium. We greeted Julia’s curtain call with the famous “Miiiiiiiiillll” monk chant chorus. ENO stage staff told her it was the loudest ovation they had ever heard on a Monday night. Simon Keenlyside as Prospero in Thomas Ades’s ‘The Tempest’ at the Met in 2012. Mark GlanvilleMy friend and conservatoire contemporary Sir Simon Keenlyside, one of the outstanding opera singers of his generation and a regular at the Met, told me, “I once figured that during a two-week period in New York, where we were performing Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” we had sung to around 40,000 people. Not exactly what you would call an unpopular art form. “It is patently untrue that opera is not loved,” he said. “Worldwide, houses are opening in China and the Middle East and Eastern Europe all the time, and wonderful singers follow.” Over in Germany, for instance, 80 opera houses continue to thrive on proud municipal support.Pace Messrs Chalamet and Nagrani, to paraphrase Mark Twain, “The report of opera’s death was an exaggeration.”

Rumors of the Demise of Opera Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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