Washington National Opera may move out of Kennedy Center due to Trump ‘takeover’ | Washington DC

The Washington National Opera (WNO) is considering moving out of the Kennedy Center, the company’s home since the US’s national performing arts center opened in 1971.

The possibility has been forced on the company as a result of the “takeover” of the center by Donald Trump, according to WNO’s artistic director, Francesca Zambello. The president declared himself chair of the institution in February, sacking and replacing its board and leadership.

Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s takeover, said Zambello.

“It is our desire to perform in our home at the Kennedy Center,” she said. “But if we cannot raise enough money, or sell enough tickets in there, we have to consider other options.

“The two things that support a company financially, because of the takeover, have been severely compromised,” she said.

Ticket sales were about 40% unsold compared with before Trump declared himself chair, said Zambello. Many have decided to boycott the center. Every day she receives messages of protest from formerly loyal members of the audience, she says.

“They say things like: ‘I’m never setting foot in there until the “orange menace” is gone.’ Or: ‘Don’t you know history? Don’t you know what Hitler did? I refuse to give you a penny,’” she said.

“People send me back their the season brochure shredded in an envelope and say: ‘Never, never, will I return: while he’s in power.’”

Before February’s coup, the opera performances were running at 80%-90% of capacity. Now, Zambello said, they were at 60%, with at times the appearance of fuller houses created by the distribution of complimentary tickets.

Philanthropic giving to the company – an important source of its funding – was down, she said. “Donor confidence has been shattered because many people feel: ‘If I give to the Kennedy Center, I’m supporting Donald Trump,’” she said.

“The building is tainted,” she said. It had been “politicized by the current management”.

Previously, the board of trustees “was always a mix of Republicans and Democrats. It did not matter that someone was a Republican or a Democrat. What mattered was that they were leading a big, important institution.”

She said that the new management of the institution “do not have experience in the arts”. Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the center, has previously served in various foreign policy roles, including US ambassador to Germany.

In addition, staffing in key areas such as marketing and development had been hollowed out, both in terms of experience and numbers, she said. “There was a promise from the new management that they would help us find new donors, increase contributions – which they have not done for our benefit,” she said.

The new management of the center had not vetoed any of Zambello’s programming choices, but “they have suggested that we produce more popular operas”, she said. “This season, we are producing The Marriage of Figaro, Aida and West Side Story … I don’t see how we can get more popular than that.”

Zambello said that when she joined the company in 2012, she committed to 50% non-white casting.

“The management has questioned some aspects of it, and we have explained these are the best people for the roles,” she said, adding: “America is an incredibly diverse country, and so we want to represent every part of this country on our stage.”

They had also questioned, she said, singers’ fees: “They have said: ‘Could we consider less expensive artists?’ We’re a feeding ground for bigger companies in this country. So we’re already hiring people who are on the rise and whose fees will get a lot more expensive later.”

Grenell had, said Zambello, issued an edict requiring all shows to be “net neutral”, that is, with costs fully covered by box-office returns and donor contributions. But, she said, “We’re at the point where now we can’t present a net-neutral budget without an epic amount of outside funding, or knowing that our patrons would come back.”

The slump in ticket sales was reflected across the board at the center, including for its concert seasons and theater, according to an analysis published by the Washington Post last week, which showed the box office down by 40% compared with a 2018 baseline.

According to Zambello, box-office figures have now ceased to be internally circulated among the center’s creative teams as part of the standard system of daily show reports.

The president declared his intention to become chair of the institution on 7 February, firing its bipartisan board of trustees. He replaced them with those of his own choosing; they elected him unanimously to the position days later. The president of the center was removed and replaced with Grenell.

The moves were widely condemned. Weeks later, when JD Vance and the second lady, Usha Vance, who was inserted on to the Kennedy Center board by Trump, attended a concert given by the National Symphony Orchestra in March, patrons booed them.

Usha Vance was already a trustee of the WNO, which has an independent board and its own endowment. “She was a supportive board member when she was a senator’s wife, and she has been a supportive board member as second lady, and we are grateful to have her patronage,” said Zambello.

“I believe that she is someone who is an equalizer,” she said. “We can’t turn our backs on half this country. We have to find a way to all communicate and function together. I don’t believe in ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

Artists have by and large remained loyal to WNO, Zambello says. However, in March, the creative team behind the opera Fellow Travelers, a love story set amid Eisenhower’s purge of gay employees from federal jobs in the 1950s, withdrew their work from the programme.

The show was replaced by a production of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s allegory on the anti-communist witch-hunts of McCarthyism.

WNO is an independent company, but it has an affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center, meaning that it agrees to produce a certain number of shows in the building; shares back office functions such as marketing and development; and receives a subsidy from the center of about $2m-$3m per year.

The affiliation agreement was made in 2011, soon before Zambello became artistic director, in order to stabilise the finances of the company. It was renewed shortly before Trump declared himself chair of the Kennedy Center.

WNO is understood to be looking at alternative venues in DC for its forthcoming season, which runs from October 2026 to May the following year. Theaters of the scale required to produce main-stage opera are scarce, though auditoriums used by the city’s Shakespeare Theater Company could potentially be taken from time to time for smaller-scale works.

The Kennedy Center declined to comment.