Vegas singer responds to Timothée Chalamet’s swipe at opera

It was the quote heard ’round the opera world, a verbal hand grenade unwittingly lobbed by a Hollywood A-lister.

Boom! It went in actor Timothée Chalamet’s face after he declared that “no one cares about” opera and ballet during a town hall with Matthew McConaughey in the run-up to this year’s Academy Awards.

While the Best Actor nominee probably wasn’t trying to throw shade at said art forms as much as note their reduced presence in the American mainstream, the backlash was swift and cutting for the “Marty Supreme” star, a former Oscar favorite who went home empty-handed instead.

Now, Vegas opera standout Christian Shelton could have justifiably taken Chalamet’s comments as fighting words — plenty of his peers did — resulting in a black eye for his field.

Instead, the UNLV grad student saw it as a chance to call attention to the music he’s grown to love, posting a social media clip of himself performing a beatific rendition of “La Rondine” by Giacomo Puccini in order to “share the power of opera with even more people.”

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“This has been one of the biggest moments for the opera world — positive or negative — in mainstream media in the last few years,” Shelton says in a recent interview. “I think it’s really a great opportunity to expose people to what we’re doing in our world of art. Of course, it could have come for a better reason — but I think it’s still a reason.”

Falling for opera

True to his words, Shelton has been exposing people to the art form in question for years now via his sizable social media presence — 800,000 followers on TikTok, 50,000-plus on Instagram.

His already substantial online following got a stratospheric boost in early 2021 when Shelton was contacted out of the blue by an ad agency representing jobs site Indeed.com. The offer was hard to believe at first: Care to sing in a Super Bowl ad for the company?

“They really wanted to give an up-and-coming singer like myself an opportunity to be heard by 100 million people,” Shelton recalls of the commercial, in which he delivered a stirring take on Andra Day’s “Rise Up.” “I was 19. I was right out of high school and had just started singing publicly. It was such a huge opportunity.”

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Shelton parlayed that opportunity into a successful career at UNLV, which culminates in “Immortal Music II,” his final recital before graduating with a master’s degree in voice next month. The 7:30 p.m. performance on Saturday at the Dr. Arturo Rando-Grillot Hall at the Lee and Thomas Beam Music Center, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, will feature a mix of new and old music from some of Shelton’s favorite composers.

It’s been a circuitous journey to Shelton, a Las Vegas Academy graduate who initially contemplated a career in theater before auditioning for the school’s choir, where he quickly distinguished himself. Upon enrolling at UNLV, Shelton had little background in opera, having grown up singing jazz, pop and R&B.

“I started college as a classical voice major, but it wasn’t something that I was really committed to,” acknowledges Shelton, who’s landed a major role with a Las Vegas opera company this fall that he can’t yet reveal. “It was like something I was doing because I was just on that path. I had won competitions prior to doing classical music, but it wasn’t like my joy or my passion. I think as my studies progressed, I started to become really in love with opera.”

A musical gateway

Because opera is not as prominent in the musical mainstream as it once was, it can be a challenging genre for newcomers to approach.

Shelton understands; he’s been there.

“I think it’s kind of hard to know where to start for opera, because it’s hundreds of years old and it’s so different across the centuries that it’s been around,” he says. “When I first started listening to opera, I didn’t know where to turn, where to begin. What were the good recordings? What are the bad recordings? What are the best operas? What are the worst operas?

“In pop music, you can understand that because you see it all the time,” he continues. “You know who you like, and they’re all singing in the same language as you, and you kind of like certain genres that you grew up with.”

Abetted by his diverse musical background, Shelton — who still sings pop as well — continues to serve as an opera gateway act, one viral TikTok clip at a time.

“For me to be the middleman for people who are maybe trying to get into classical music as a whole, or trying to expose themselves to other genres, I love that because I didn’t particularly have that person,” he says. “It’s really exciting to be that for someone else.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.