If you love opera, as I do, it’s no good getting defensive when someone points out how unfashionable it is. Timothée Chalamet seems to have offended everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to Doja Cat, simply by observing that opera is no longer a mass entertainment. (He was actually comparing its dwindled audiences to those of the cinema, which are now disappearing too because of streaming services.)
Only 7 per cent of British adults go to the opera – nowhere near enough for such a labour-intensive art form to pay for itself. The Government keeps it on life-support, although barely. My cousin, who is an opera singer, earns so little that she is seriously thinking about becoming an Uber driver instead.
Instead of shooting the messenger, how can we change the message? By teaching a new generation to love opera. It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds: I know, because I have done it with my own children. Just seize your offspring by the scruff of the neck (or a godchild, a grandchild or any youngster with half an ear for music) and follow these five steps:
1. Start with Gilbert and Sullivan
Everyone of taste and discernment despises Victorian light opera, so your children are certain to love it. And rightly so: every song is a rumpety-pumpety banger, the plots make more sense than most grand operas, lots of the jokes still land and the staging is reliably colourful and camp. Like going to the panto but enjoyable.
2. Make an occasion of it
My daughter was five when I first took her to the opera (an all-male rendition of The Pirates of Penzance). She wore a party dress and a string of fake pearls, and I donned a frock in solidarity. This unprecedented finery, together with the interval ice cream, is all she talked about for weeks. “It’s about the aesthetic,” she says now, with the wisdom of a 14-year-old. “Getting dressed up is half the fun.”
3. Help them to see and hear the magic
Most operas are performed in beautiful old theatres with bad acoustics. Point out the gilded opulence of the auditorium, the strange gargoyles or classical beasts hidden in the plasterwork, the plushy-looking boxes where (or so you imply) only royals and billionaires can afford to sit.
Show them the orchestra pit and tell them to look out for bored percussionists picking their noses and yawning between parts. Explain that, unlike musicals or pop concerts, opera uses no microphones or amplification at all. They may find it quieter than expected, but just listen: that supple, audacious, thrilling instrument soaring above the rest is nothing but a human voice.
4. Tell them the plot before it begins
Not in detail – you’ll go mad, it makes even less sense read aloud from the programme than performed on stage – but the main gist. Explain what a courtesan is, and tuberculosis.
5. Go cheaply and often
Opera companies are desperate to get more young people in, so most offer bargain rates for children. It’s actually cheaper for me to take my kids to the English National Opera, where under 21s go free, than to our local cinema. (Sorry Timothée.) I recently took a gaggle of my daughter’s friends, all teetering along in body-con frocks and giant lashes. None had ever been before, but they all want to go again. It belongs to them now; and belonging is where love begins.