Before I even read about the Timothée Chalamet controversy, I was getting messages from all over the world asking if I had any opinion about it. After all, I’ve been spending the last couple of decades working full time on expanding the reach of opera, in a place far from the centers of the operatic cosmos. Surely I must be personally affronted by such a casual dismissal of my life’s work!
The thing is, although it’s a bit much to say that “no one” is interested in opera, statistics would seem to indicate that world-wide the audience is shrinking — just like the audience for non-blockbuster cinema. But where I am, it’s not shrinking. When I returned to Thailand almost thirty years ago, there was virtually no opera to speak of here, but now there’s a bit of a scene. Opera Siam, the company I founded, has had its setbacks, but continues
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