Another One Bites the Dust

The Washington National Opera (WNO) is now considering moving out of the Kennedy Center. This has been their home since it opened in 1971. Why? What’s their motivation?

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

The Guardian article goes on to say that the new management has no experience in the arts. No surprise there. Prez Pedo’s infamous for hiring unqualified, incompetent dimwits whose only skills are sucking up and, possibly, looking good on camera.

Richard Grenell, fer instance, is a former foreign policy guy – no background in the arts. Grenell’s the Trump toadie who’s been calling every artist’s contract cancellation a “publicity stunt.” Sure dude. You can say it every minute of every damn day but that won’t make it reality. 

NWO joins Hamilton and Chuck Redd.

The Guardian article made clear that Trump’s management wants fewer Black and Brown singers and more whites. Shocking? Yeah, not so much. They felt all performers should be paid less as well. 

New management also wants more popular operas. Apparently, The Marriage of Figaro, Aida, and West Side Story (which they’re already putting on this season) isn’t getting enough middle class, Middle Americans, (who would never ever never pay to see opera anyway), excited. Word to the worm brained – opera’s appeal isn’t broad. Mind you, I’m keen on Mozart’s Der Hölle Rache (AKA The Queen of the Night aria), Bizet’s Habanera, Wagner’s Die Walküre (thanks to Bugs) plus a few other BUT who isn’t? My tastes are pedestrian. In general, opera just doesn’t do it for most folks.

Prez Pedo’s a black hole of intelligence, wisdom, culture, grace and anything that could be considered an art. That’s been clear to anyone with half a braincell the minute they laid eyes on him or first read about him. Yes, he and his worthless, bungling, sycophantic renfields will destroy the Kennedy Center. It’ll likely be nothing more than a smoking carcass in a few years. I imagine though, on occasion, tickets will be sold so that Ma and Pa Nimrod can drive in from Bumfuck, Arkansas for a concert of greasy, discordant screeching by Ted Nugent and Kid Rock. Maybe Scott Baio and Dean Cain can put together a production of Richard III.

We can rebuild the Center. There will be so damn much to rebuild and repair.