The New York Times called the Washington National Opera’s decision to move its performances out of the Kennedy Center “perhaps the largest artistic rebuke yet to President Trump’s campaign to remake the Kennedy Center in his image.”
That is literally what Trump is up to. After naming himself chairman of the once esteemed cultural center, President Sleepyhead illegally slapped his own name in front of the Kennedy name. Can a giant Chairman Mao-type banner of Trump and/or marble statue be far off?
The Times also reported, “Opera leaders said the decision to leave was in response to a drop in attendance and a decline in donor contributions during the president’s second term, as well as an escalating number of artists who have refused to appear at the Kennedy Center” since Trump decided to turn it into a shrine to himself.
Predictably, Trump lickspittle and executive director Ric Grenell is pretending the opera’s departure is good news. “Having an exclusive Opera was just not financially smart,” he reportedly wrote on Xitter. “And our patrons clearly wanted a refresh.”
But the refresh patrons want is not likely to be anything Grenell will provide. In September, I wrote about plunging ticket sales, revenue and crowd sizes at the center. Since the name-change, things only seem to have gotten worse. Christmas and New Years shows were canceled because the artists refused to perform there. On top of that, “Béla Fleck, the celebrated banjoist, recently announced he was pulling out of performances with the National Symphony Orchestra, and the ‘Wicked’ composer Stephen Schwartz said he would not host the opera’s gala,” The Times reported.
I doubt the marble armrests Trump recently shopped for will do much to bring back audiences, either.
But hey, they’ll always have Amazon’s Melania “Don’t ask me anything about Jeffrey Epstein” Trump “documentary!”