Luca Guadagnino defends Timothée Chalamet over opera and ballet remarks: ‘How can one comment become a planetary polemic?’

The director Luca Guadagnino has defended Timothée Chalamet after the actor drew criticism for suggesting that ballet and opera were art forms about which “no one cares about” any more.

Speaking to Italian newspaper La Stampa ahead of the premiere of his staging of the opera The Death of Klinghoffer in Florence, the director said reaction to Chalamet’s comments was disproportionate.

“I am not on social media and don’t understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic,” said Guadagnino.

The director cast Chalamet in the actor’s breakthrough role, in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, which earned him his first Oscar nomination. Guadagnino, who made his opera debut in 2011 with a production of Verdi’s Falstaff, conceded the actor “could have spared himself … but he’s young, smart, sensitive, and he fears that cinema could become marginal. And that’s why every form of imagination should be nurtured.” He added, “We must unite the arts, not separate them.”

Timothée Chalamet at the 98th Academy Awards, in Los Angeles, on 15 March. Photograph: Shutterstock

Chalamet received considerable backlash following comments made during a recorded conversation for CNN/Variety with Matthew McConaughey on 24 February, in which he said: “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this any more.’”

His remarks prompted disapproval from members of the ballet and opera communities, including the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, which responded on social media by inviting the actor to attend Guadagnino’s forthcoming production of The Death of Klinghoffer.

“Come and see for yourself that opera is alive, kicking and actually matters to people,” the institution posted on social media.

Actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Whoopi Goldberg were also among those to publicly criticise Chalamet’s remarks.

Guadagnino’s intervention marks the most prominent defence of Chalamet to date. The actor’s comments have sparked wider debate over the place of traditional performing arts in contemporary culture.

Chalamet was unsuccessful in his bid to become the second-youngest recipient of the best actor Oscar earlier this year, when he lost out to Michael B Jordan at the Academy Awards. However it appears unlikely his comments about opera and ballet factored into the snub for his performance in Marty Supreme, as the interview only aired as Oscar voting closed.