{"id":530654,"date":"2026-04-14T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530654\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:26:08","slug":"cheers-timmy-royal-ballet-and-opera-head-thanks-chalamet-for-fantastic-boost-to-sales-timothee-chalamet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530654\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Cheers, Timmy!\u2019 Royal Ballet and Opera head thanks Chalamet for \u2018fantastic\u2019 boost to sales | Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The head of the UK\u2019s Royal Ballet and Opera has thanked Hollywood actor Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> for inadvertently boosting ticket sales and engagement through his high-profile critique of the art forms last month.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cwhere it\u2019s like, \u2018Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Chalamet, whose mother and grandmother worked in ballet, swiftly added: \u201cAll respect to all the ballet and opera people out there.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Times<\/a>, the RBO\u2019s Alex Beard called the public reaction \u201cjust fantastic\u201d and said he was pleased his organisation had not followed similar institutions in rebuking Chalamet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it important that we didn\u2019t issue a kind of hoity-toity response to Chalamet,\u201d he said. \u201cWe simply said, \u2018Take a look at what we\u2019re doing, mate\u2019 \u2013 for instance, the fact that the largest portion of our audience by age is 20 to 30-year-olds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd 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!\u201d<\/p>\n

Many bodies pivoted Chalamet\u2019s critique into a promotional push for their productions, including the Seattle Opera<\/a>, who offered a discount on tickets for their production of Carmen if buyers used the code \u201cTIMOTHEE\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Chalamet\u2019s two-time director, Luca Guadagnino, who is now staging an opera in Italy, defended<\/a> the actor, saying the response to his remarks had been disproportionate. <\/p>\n

Speaking to Italian newspaper La Stampa ahead of the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer in Florence, the film-maker expressed bafflement that \u201cone [single] comment can become a planetary polemic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Guadagnino continued: \u201cHe\u2019s young, smart, sensitive and he fears that cinema could become marginal. And that\u2019s why every form of imagination should be nurtured. We must unite the arts, not separate them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The head of the UK\u2019s Royal Ballet and Opera has thanked Hollywood actor Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet for inadvertently boosting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-530654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}