‘Cheers, Timmy!’ Royal Ballet and Opera head thanks Chalamet for ‘fantastic’ boost to sales

Actor Timothée Chalamet was credited by RBO’s chief exec with inadvertently boosting ticket sales through his high-profile critique of the art forms

The head of the UK’s Royal Ballet and Opera has thanked Hollywood actor Timothée Chalamet for inadvertently boosting ticket sales and engagement through his high-profile critique of the art forms last month.

While promoting his Oscar-tipped film Marty Supreme in March, the star expressed his relief that he was working in cinema, rather than opera or ballet, “where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more.’”

Chalamet, whose mother and grandmother worked in ballet, swiftly added: “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.” Backlash to his appraisal of the art forms was swift and pronounced, with stars including Jamie Lee Curtis and Whoopi Goldberg criticising him, while many opera and ballet institutions chastised his comments.

Speaking to the Times, the RBO’s Alex Beard called the public reaction “just fantastic” and said he was pleased his organisation had not followed similar institutions in rebuking Chalamet.

“I thought it important that we didn’t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet,” he said. “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!”

Many bodies pivoted Chalamet’s critique into a promotional push for their productions, including the Seattle Opera, who offered a discount on tickets for their production of Carmen if buyers used the code “TIMOTHEE”.

On Monday, Chalamet’s two-time director, Luca Guadagnino, who is now staging an opera in Italy, defended the actor, saying the response to his remarks had been disproportionate.

Speaking to Italian newspaper La Stampa ahead of the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer in Florence, the film-maker expressed bafflement that “one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic”.

Guadagnino continued: “He’s young, smart, sensitive and he fears that cinema could become marginal. And that’s why every form of imagination should be nurtured. We must unite the arts, not separate them.”