Latest / The Front / Timothee Chalamet is right about opera and ballet, isn't he?

Transcript

Timothee Chalamet is right about opera and ballet, isn't he? · The Front

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Oh please, it's nice to not talk about few shortages.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I don't have a car.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: I'm Claire Harvey. Opera and ballet the most exquisite of
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: theatrical art forms and the most misunderstood. But are they
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: part of the problem.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Security is extremely take tonight.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I just got to mention that, Yeah, I'm told there's
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: They're just mad you left out jazz.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: At the twenty twenty six Oscars, something happened that I
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: hadn't anticipated. The world ended up feeling a bit sorry.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I think for Timothy Shalla may a superstar actor, probably
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Jens He's biggest star. He was mercilessly roasted by host
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Conan O'Brien and various other presenters for comments that he'd
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: made about opera and ballet.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: I admire people, and I've done it myself to want
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: to talk too, like, hey, we got to keep movie
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: theaters alive, you know, we got to keep this genre alive.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: And another part of me feels like if people want
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: to see it, like Barbie like Oppenheimer. They're going to
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: go see it and go out of their way and
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: be loud and proud about it. And I don't want
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: to be working in ballet or opera or you know
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: things where it's like, hey, keep this thing alive even
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: though no one cares about this. Yeah, all respect to
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: fourteen cents in viewership. But damn, I just took shots
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: for no reason.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: There's no shot. I hear what you say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, so.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: And of course he and his film Marti Supreme didn't
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: win any Oscars at all. Richard Ferguson is the Australian's
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Canberra Bureau chief, but he's also our resident high culture expert. Richard,
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: I need you to be the antagonist here for a moment.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Why is Timothy Shella may wrong about opera and ballet?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Well?
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I think Timothy Shalamy lost the Oscar because he's a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: muppet and is kind of arrogant, swaggering campaign and you know,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: bringing around Kylie Jenner and wearing suits that weren't any
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: good were probably why I really lost the Oscar. But
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: the opera and Bally thing became such a lightning rod
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: in an industry that seems to have forgotten its values,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: seems to have forgotten its traditions. This isn't just about
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: bally and opera. There are movie stars out there Claire
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: who don't know who Elizabeth Taylor. They don't know who
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Richard Burton are. They don't know who Catherine Hepburn or
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacallar. So how
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: on earth would they be expected to know who Maria kallisis.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: The interesting thing about Timothy shall May is that he
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: is the ultimate fad a kid. He grew up in
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: a New York building full of dances and actors. His
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: mother was a ballet dancer, so is his sister. He
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: went to the high school that's in the musical fame.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: You know, this is his world. And in this very
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: kind of casual comment where he said I don't want
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: to be defending an art form that is dying or
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: that is on life support, he enraged the rest of
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: the opera in ballet community, who I think felt like
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: they've been betrayed by one of their own right unbelievable.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, you could not if you're a sort of
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: a person who's interested in arts and culture. You have
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a tech talker and Instagram. Every single tech talk and
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Instagram that was coming up in my feed was Balle's.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Ballet dancers, opera singers are creatives just absolutely venting absolute read.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Some mate, you're pingpool film ain going to outlift the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: opera and ballet darling. All right, so let's rabau.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: You know, it was kind of colleidoscopic and it's stupidity
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: and in sensitivity.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Ballet and opera art forms they have carried.
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: Culture, storytelling and human expression for a generation. Really, think
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: about if people are going to be watching Wanka in
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: four hundred years. It is clear that opera and ballet
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: have defeated timotheyha.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I think there's a couple of things about this. Number
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: one bally and opera is they're so difficult to do.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: There's such hone skills. Quite frankly, it's a lot harder
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: to be a really good ballet dancer or a really
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: good opera singer than it is to be an actor,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: especially to be a movie actor. You know, not let's
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: take theater out of the equation. To be a movie
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: actress not that hard. You just have to be pretty
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: in the way the camera is most of the time
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: any lines, and even then you don't need to know
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: your lines, you know, But to be a ballet singer
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: or an opera singer requires you must be absolute pinnacle.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: The training is arduous. I remember I did a job
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: in Birmingham with Australian ballet dancers who'd gone to join
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: the Birmingham Ballet and we were taking photos of these,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: you know, these fellas, and you know, they looked amazing,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: and he was the ballet dancer was looking at the
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: four doors afterwards, and he kept saying, I wonder if
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: we need to retake them, like my foot is not
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: just quite right, and if my instructor sees that my
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: foot wasn't quite rate. And that's Spectru and a newspaper
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: and another say of the world, I'm going to be
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: in bake trouble. But is there probably a little bit
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: of end security that's come through the ballet and opera community. Probably.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: I thought they were so shrill in response to Timothy
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: shall May that they kind of proved his point. It's
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: interesting how present they are on TikTok and Instagram, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: of course ballet in particular really lends itself to those
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: social media forms.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: These are gorgeous, young fit people doing amazing things. Yes,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: but the tone of those videos that I see anyway,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I don't know if this is just my algorithm, is
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: all about athleticism.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: It's not really about art.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: You see them doing forty five pirouettes in a row
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: or doing a challenging gay They're not really ever in
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: what I say, talking about the art that they're creating.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like gymnastics with two tooth.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Claire, And I think a lot of especially
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the Bally videos that we're talking about, a lot of
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: them are a little bit sexualized, Let's be honest. I
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: think especially the male ballet dancers who are and usually
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: going towards a gay audience, and a lot of the
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: female ballet dancers too, going towards a you know, a
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: straight male audience and nine other women. You know, it
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: is it is about their bodies, you know, it is
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: they're trying to see Bally is sexy. It is very
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: much harder to do that with opera. Opera usually isn't sexy.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You know. We think of kind of you know, Dame
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: John Sutherland and you know, God bless Our, you know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: wonderful singer, but you know she wasn't Bridget Bardola.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I remember when the Three Tenors, you know, every so
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: often an opera act breakthrough, and when it was the
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Three Tenors, it was like, my god, how's that Carreras
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: is the whole one?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: You know, because he.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: Was, you know, Pavarotti wasn't Robert Redford. You know. But
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I am slightly more anti Timothy Shalomy than you are
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: because I do think it it represented from him a
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: lack of humility, which I think Timothy Shalomy has really
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: come to represent. He's gotten too big for his boots.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, you want to talk about a medium that's dying.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Are the movies not dying? Clear? You know, the profits
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: are absolutely through the toilet. You know, there's a couple
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: of heat outs. You know, Oppenheimer and Barbie were Beag Sinners,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: which you know was obviously kind of the runner up
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: of the Oscars. The Vampire movie did okay, but you
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: know it's not We're not talking about films that are
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: part of a monoculture workiller conversation anymore.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, every time I go to the cinema, I
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: kind of look for signs that the movies are not dying.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: And because I got a lot of children's films, they're
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: definitely not dying. The state of cinema is both causing
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: and is then exacerbated by the sheer cost of going
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: to the movies. Though Richard like, for two people to
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: go to the cinema is a one hundred and fifty
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: dollars night out. Now for a family to go, it's
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: it's three hundred dollars if you're buying popcorn and drinks
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: and you know, tickets in a nice seat. So cinema
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: has priced itself into the territory of opera and ballet.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: You know, you could go and see the Australian Ballet
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: for what a cost to see a blockbuster at Hoyts.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Now, that is exactly the problem the opera and ballet,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: and to be honest, general theater, whether it be musicals,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: are kind of street please are having at the moment.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Patty Lapaune, the Greek Broadway musical star, as an evangelist
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: on this she says, you need to mortgage your host
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: to see a shore on Broadway. You may not need
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: to mortgage your host to see opera Australia, or a
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: play at the Semi Feir at a company, or see
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: a musical on Collins Street in Melbourne, but you probably
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: have to mortgage a small flat, you know which, speaking
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: of Samie and Melbourn's probably great expensive anyway, like this is,
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the prices are extraordinary. But we do also have a
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: problem of, especially with opera in this country, of leezy thinking,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: there's a lack of imagination. Claire, there are only so
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: many times I can see Carmen, and I love Carmen.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I love Carmen, but I don't need to see Carmen anymore.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: I feel the same way about non musical forms of
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: theater as well. Speaking as a fear to lover and
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: someone who absolutely loves going to see plays, I can't
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: think of a play that I've seen in the past
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: decade that hasn't left me feeling bored and disappointed. There
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: are so many examples of classics being reworked to make
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: everybody for a lesbian. For example, that was a Chekhov
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: play that I saw a couple of years ago to
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: make male characters like Marc Anthony a woman, which is
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: what the Bell Shakespeare Company is doing right now with
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: your liesa.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it feels like they've run out of a
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: das to me.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Michael Fassbender made a film of Macbeth about ten years ago. Now, well,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: my best I shall be king hereafter. And a rather
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: famous actor who will remain nameless said to me Michael
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Fassbender said, I was making Macbeth and I said, how
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: are you going to do it? And he said to
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: this actor, well, I've got this really radical idea. I'm
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: going to set it in Scotland and kind of you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: the thirteen hundreds. And that's and that is true. It
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: is now essentially impossible to do Shakespeare with swords and
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: sandals and you know, humpbacks, etc. And it goes either way.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: You know, you've seen this new trend which I absolutely hate,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: and the importance of being earn as bioscar Wild where
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Lady Bracknell has played as a drag character, has played
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: essentially as a pantomime Dane, and I just hate that
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: because Lady Bracknell is such a female character. It's such
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: a such a woman, such a woman, and so I
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: can't look. Sometimes it works, well, I don't think it's
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: completely wrong for you know, obviously one of the greatest
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: roles that is often played by a woman in Shakespeare
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: is Richard the Second, which is very hard for a
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: woman to do because essentially Richard the Second is a
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: very fay gay man. Well what we would call a
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: gay man today. You wouldn't call it a gay man
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: in Shakespeare's time, but a very fay man. But you know,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Fionna shaded an amazing performance of that kind in the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: early nineties. But Kate Blanchett is, you know, renowned for
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: her Richard the Second that she did about you know,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: fifteen or sixteen years ago, for the Sydney Fear of Company.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: It can be done, but you're right, Claire, it is.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: It's everything in the Fear at the moment is tokenistic.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: It's lazy. It's appealing to a wokeness that quite frankly
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: has gone out of fashion.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Now you will be watched over Vinyl together.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Different King.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Timothy Chalamay was in an adaptation of Shakespeare to shakespeare
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: plays Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth that I
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: thought was much more original than anything anyone else has
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: done recently. It's called The King, where he played the
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: young Prince how kind of growing up and becoming this
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Warrior King. It wasn't very faithful to the Shakespeare play.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: It emerged a lot of storylines, things were done differently.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Robert Pattinson played the French King brilliantly, I thought, but
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: it was taking the combination of British history and Shakespeare's
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: interpretation and then reinterpreting it again to actually be original.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: That was a movie where he announced himself as a
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: serious actor. I think you could tell that because he
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: had a terrible haircut. But it didn't do as well
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: at the box office as say Dune or Wonka, the
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: more crowd playing movies that he's done. And this is
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: the issue for Opera and balle really, isn't it. They
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: cannot exist anymore without massive government subsidies.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: They can't exist without massive government subsidies. The other thing
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: that Opera Australia has tried to do is essentially every
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: year they do a blockbuster musical, they do a Guys
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: and Dolls, they do West Side Story and by the way,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: most of the times they do these quite well, not brilliantly,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: not as well as they do. You know Madam Barfly,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: I mean I saw Madam Barfly at the Sydney Harbor
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Like
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: it's extraordinary. It's as good as anything I've ever seen
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: in the West Ender or Broadway. But you know, Amy
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Lane has been announced as the new director of Opera
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: for Opera Australia just in the past week, and you
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: know she has a massive task. Opera Australia has been
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: recycling through people. It's it's got a ten million dollar deficit.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: It is in a real crisis, and it's in a
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: crisis because it's not performing at an international height. It's
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: not it's not doing very well, like it's not putting
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: on good enough shows.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: There's a mood in opera and ballet to reach down
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: to the math audience which they had in the seventeen
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: hundreds and the eighteen hundreds, of course, when it was
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the only form of entertainment. But the only ideas they
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: have are three hundred year old ideas.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent. And I think the same could be
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: said of the theater. They've just announced on the West
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: End that Gillian Anderson is going to do Who's Afraid
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: of Virginia Wolf. Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf is one
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: of the greatest plays ever written in the history of mankind.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant play. We have seen it, Claire,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: we have seen Who's Afraid of Virgenua Wolf. Now look,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: there's a brilliant production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: with the greatest Gerian actress, Catch Durrett, that's been touring
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: and that that's fabulous. And we want to keep the
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: classics alive. I don't want Shakespeare to disappear. I don't
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: want Chekhov to disappear. I don't want Absen to disappear.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: I don't want Australian classics to disappear. And I have
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: great fear of that. You know, there was recently red
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Stach Theater in Melbourne Dead and the kind of trilogy
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: that includes Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. And we don't
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: want some of the Seventeenth Doll to die, and we
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: don't want Don's Party to die. And it's the scene
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: with the opera. But there's a way of being inventive
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: without being torkenastic walk and going to the lowest common denominator.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's most opinionated theater expert thanks Richard.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks Claria.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: You can read all the best coverage of opera, ballet
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: and the movies anytime at the Australian dot com a you.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: This episode of.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: The Front was hosted and produced by me Claire Harvey
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: and edited by Joshua Burton. Jasper Leik wrote our theme.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on the Front this week. Our
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: team includes Kristin Amiot, Lea Samaglu and Tiffany Dimac.