The most striking thing about the reaction to Timothee Chalamet’s comments on ballet and opera being irrelevant is that all of the reaction has focussed almost entirely on ballet.
No one has shown up defending Siegfried. No one has talked about what Idomeneo means to them, how the music moves their soul. They’ve talked about ballet, dancers have posted beautiful little reels and montages, opera houses have shown clips of the big Swan Lake and Nutcracker crowd-pleasers, showing the curtain falling on a sea of applause from a full house.
For that matter, no one has addressed the overall decline that classical music has undergone, which Chalamet is absolutely right about. His only mistake was including ballet in his comments.
Classical music supports most ballet, but you could take any music and create ballet to it. Sergei Polunin created some neat shapes to Hozier. Ballet has moved through modernity to constantly accompany dance as a whole, with every other little girl going to hybrid ballet/tap/street dance classes at some terrible outfit that is mainly concerned with progressing impressive moves for parents as fast as possible. But they enjoy it, it is of our time and our world.
Classical music is by definition not of our time. I should think the only music orchestras make money out of was written either before 1850, or after 1930. Maybe beautiful music needs peace?
The resting writer 
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