<\/p>\n
Luca Guadagnino has \u2013 at least partly \u2013 come to Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s defense regarding the \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d star\u2019s viral comments that he didn\u2019t want theatrical moviegoing to end up like the \u201cballet or opera.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Italian director did so just as he prepares to open his rendition of U.S. composer John Adams\u2019 1991\u00a0opera \u201cThe Death of Klinghoffer\u201d in Italy.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n In an interview over the weekend with Italian daily La Stampa \u2014 ahead of the April 19 premiere of \u201cThe Death of Klinghoffer\u201d at the prestigious Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opera festival in Florence \u2014 Guadagnino, who is credited with launching Chalamet\u2019s career with \u201cCall Me by Your Name,\u201d was asked about Chalamet\u2019s caustic quip.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not on social media and don\u2019t understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic,\u201d Guadagnino said.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe Timoth\u00e9e could have spared himself,\u201d he added. \u201cBut he\u2019s young, smart, sensitive and he fears that cinema could become marginal. And that\u2019s exactly why every form of imagination should be nurtured. We must unite the arts, not separate them.\u201d<\/p>\n Chalamet infuriated the global ballet and opera communities when during\u00a0\u201cA celebrity.land & Variety Town Hall Event\u201d<\/a> last month he said\u00a0that he didn\u2019t want theatrical moviegoing to end up like the \u201cballet or opera,\u201d where artists want to \u201ckeep this thing alive\u201d even though \u201cno one cares\u201d about it anymore.<\/p>\n The Florence event that is hosting the Guadagnino-directed opera was among the institutions that took offense. \u201cHey Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, why don\u2019t you drop by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino to see John Adams\u2019s \u2018The Death of Klinghoffer\u2019? It\u2019s directed by your old pal Luca Guadagnino, so you know it\u2019s going to be a masterpiece,\u201d The Maggio Musicale said in a social media post.<\/p>\n \u201cCome and see for yourself that Opera is alive, kicking, and actually matters to people!\u201d the Maggio post added.<\/p>\n In the La Stampa interview, Guadagnino \u2014 who is also set to direct Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s opera \u201cUn Ballo in Maschera\u201d at Milan\u2019s venerable La Scala theatre next year \u2014 said that he directs operas \u201cnot as a film director who does opera to get attention from the press, but as a director who does opera full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Death of Klinghoffer,\u201d which revolves around the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and the killing of American Leon Klinghoffer, is \u201cpart passion play, part docudrama, part modern ballet,\u201d as the Variety<\/em> review from 1992<\/a> puts it, calling the opera \u201ca somber exploration of suffering and loss that attempts to deal with current events in terms of their deep-seeded roots.\u201d<\/p>\n In the interview, Guadagnino said that composer Adams and libretto writer Alice Goodman have \u201cexplored in depth the atavic, mythical and mythological dimension of two peoples [Jews and Palestinians] who are condemned to a rapport that is both symbiotic and conflictual, and therefore deeply upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about his upcoming feature \u201cArtificial,\u201d which is reportedly about OpenAI and has a stellar cast comprising Andrew Garfield, Monica Barbaro, Jason Schwartzman and Yura Borisov, Guadagnino said the film is \u201calmost finished.\u201d<\/p>\n Guadagnino revealed that \u201cArtificial\u201d is \u201cthe story of a group of kids who gamble on the utopia of an artificial intelligence that can self-generate, with all the ethical consequences this carries.\u201d The Amazon MGM Studios production is expected to premiere at the Venice Film Festival this fall.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Luca Guadagnino has \u2013 at least partly \u2013 come to Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s defense regarding the \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d star\u2019s viral comments that he didn\u2019t want theatrical moviegoing to end up like the \u201cballet or opera.\u201d The Italian director did so just as he prepares to open his rendition of U.S. composer John Adams\u2019 1991\u00a0opera \u201cThe Death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2371150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[409676,317973,461072,461073,34943],"class_list":["post-2371149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-john-adams","tag-luca-guadagnino","tag-maggio-musicale-fiorentino","tag-the-death-of-klinghoffer","tag-timothee-chalamet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Luca-Guadagnino-Defends-Timothee-Chalamet-After-Ballet-and-Opera-Controversy.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371151,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371149\/revisions\/2371151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2371150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}