Photo by Geoff Carter
By Geoff Carter
Timothee Chalamet is wrong. And he’s right. During a CNN/Vanity Fair town hall with Matthew McConaughey, the young actor said, “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there” (Vanity Fair).
All respect, indeed.
Mr. Chalamet is young and already incredibly successful, which has been known to produce differing degrees of overbearing condescension and smarminess in other young talents (see Jason Bieber), but he’s wrong about the fact that no one cares about opera or the ballet anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth. This young man is a movie star, a cultural icon, and an actor of no mean talent, and as such, he should appreciate the discipline, commitment, and talent needed to participate in these two particular art forms. He should know better than to be so caustically glib about them.
Granted, neither ballet nor the opera is as popular as it used to be and are only just financially viable, needing to be propped up by wealthy patrons. Admittedly, Mr. Chalamet is right on this point that it is mainly devotees on both sides of the stage keeping these lively on life support.
My wife and I went to the opera for the first time this last week, attending a performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at The Lyric Opera of Chicago. While I have been exposed to opera, it never really struck a chord with me (pardon the pun). Butterfly was part of my father’s record collection, and he used to play it quite often, but I never really listened. My loss.
Chicago’s Civic Opera House is a magnificent building that was completed in 1929—days after the Great Crash. We arrived early on the date of the show and entered the huge grand foyer flanked with huge columns and crystal chandeliers over a floor of solid marble. We did a little exploring, discovering a downstairs space that was hosting a party for a society of young opera fanciers but didn’t crash it. We also ran across The Art of Culture art exhibit in the Grand Foyer and Mezzanine displaying examples of Mexican, Japanese, and African American pieces. We also discovered a restaurant, a cocktail lounge, and other entertainment spaces built into the complex.
The decorative character of the building is “a hybrid of Art Noveau and Art Deco styles” (Lyric Opera House History). The painted fire curtain scene and many of the decoration details were provided by artist John Guerin. In short, the place reeked of sophistication.
After we had made our online reservations a few weeks before the event, we began receiving all sorts of Lyric Opera emails. Instead of the usual marketing ploys and donations requests sent by most arts foundations, these emails ranged from invitations to attend lectures, a description of the show, an online copy of the program book, and a YouTube interview with the director. Another email invited us to a discussion with the director and artistic director to offer insights into the opera’s historical significance through the lens examining the narratives one-sided white imperialism. It was a surprising and welcome outreach.
We did attend a pre-show talk about the opera an hour before showtime which—I assumed—was designed to help opera newbies get the lay of the land. The talk described the plot and history of Butterfly and also examined how this particular production’s framing addresses the view of white elitism and male objectification of women through the lens of modern virtual reality.
We found our seats. When the curtain rose, I was surprised to see that a bar suspended across the top of the proscenium arch displayed subtitles—called supertitles, I learned later—that translated the dialogue in real time. To me, this erased one of the major barriers to the operatic experience—not understanding what the hell they were saying.
This was an incredibly lavish production. The sets, the costumes, and the lighting was absolutely breathtaking. The initial scene took place in a modern-day apartment where our protagonist Pinkerton enters a virtual reality game that takes him into his fantasy reality of Butterfly—and so the opera begins.
Lieutenant Pinkerton (Evan Leroy Johnson) of the U.S. Navy seeks to marry fifteen-year-old Cio-Cio-San, or Butterfly (Karah Son). He navigates the protocols of Japanese culture like a bull in a china closet, insulting everything from his Japanese-built house to Butterfly’s family to the culture itself. It is a marriage of convenience—his convenience.
He leaves, promising to return. Butterfly has his child. She never loses hope of his return, although everyone around tells her to forget Pinkerton. Word comes to her that he has married an American woman and will not see Butterfly. Things go downhill from there.
It would be difficult to underestimate the impact of the production and lighting design on this production’s impact. Not only does it highlight the beauty of Butterfly’s Japan, it emphasizes the colorful and sometimes garish milieu of virtual reality games, bridging the gap between the reality of the opera, the then, and our present reality, our now. All of it meshed beautifully into an extraordinarily stirring vision. The orchestra, the magnificent cast, the wonderful exotic sets and costumes meshed into a gestalt that was truly—well, operatic.
I was also struck by the feeling of community in the audience. It was a packed house—over 3,000 people—which I found amazing for a Monday evening. Some patrons were dressed to the nines, others came in business casual, and others chose more eclectic looks. I did not (as sometimes happen during Broadway shows) see anyone in warm-up suits.
I was also amazed at the audience response. After the last tragic scene, the house exploded with a spontaneous heartfelt cheer I had never, in my decades of theater and concert going, experienced. I had never seen anything like it—not for Bruce Springsteen, not for Wicked, and not for the Rolling Stones. It was a remarkable display of enthusiasm, love, and gratitude.
This was also a community that had reached out to newcomers like me in an effort to make opera more accessible, less intimidating, and more fun, But the sad truth is that try as they might, opera is not accessible to everyone. Tickets are very pricey, which is also true with the theater and ballet. It’s much more affordable to see a movie or get a streaming service at home.
Timothee Chalamet is correct when he says that is a hard-core group of fans and patrons who are keeping these arts alive. He is dead wrong when he says no one cares about them anymore. In my very limited experience with The Lyric Opera of Chicago, I would have to say that, yes, the opera is no longer a cultural mainstay. It has been marginalized by technology, by cost, and by the perception that it is elitist—which is at least partly true.
Timothee Chalamet is incorrect when he says no one cares about opera or ballet (you could probably throw jazz in there, too), but these arts, against all odds, have survived. In an ideal world, the arts would not be dependent upon the whims of a free-market society that gives us products like the Mario Brothers movie, but in our world, they depend on revenue.
I have a new appreciation for not only for opera itself, but for the enthusiasm and openness with which its proponents reached out to us. It seems to be a remarkable community and one to which we will return. It deserves not just to survive, but to thrive.
