Washington National Opera

Seventy years and four names

The company began in 1956 as the Opera Society of Washington, with Paul Callaway as its first music director. It became the Washington Opera in 1977 — the year the baritone George London took charge briefly before a heart attack ended his tenure — and acquired its present name in 2004, four years after Congress designated it the national opera company of the United States.

Martin Feinstein ran the company from 1980 to 1995 and is the figure most responsible for its scale: annual ticket sales rose from roughly 32,000 to more than 100,000 under him. Plácido Domingo followed, leading the company from 2000 to 2011, the period in which the national designation arrived and the repertoire grew heavier.

It played at the Kennedy Center from the building's early years, and in 2011 the relationship was formalised into an affiliation agreement under which the centre handled marketing, fundraising and administration and held the opera's endowment. That arrangement lasted 15 years.

The work that built the reputation

The company's largest undertaking was Wagner's complete Ring, staged in instalments between 2006 and 2010 in a production associated with Francesca Zambello, who has been artistic director since 2011. Her American frontier reading of the cycle went on to a life beyond Washington.

The other durable achievement is institutional rather than theatrical. The Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program supplies the company with comprimario casting and, increasingly, principals. The American Opera Initiative, founded in 2013, commissions short works from composer-librettist pairs and premieres them in a single evening each January; the 2026 edition was a bill of three 20-minute operas, most of them written by collaborators who had only just met.

Robert Spano was appointed music director in February 2024 and has conducted much of the company's recent repertoire, including both its spring 2026 mainstage openings and, in November, Nixon in China.

9 January 2026: the break

On 9 January 2026 the company announced it would seek what it called an amicable early termination of the affiliation agreement and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit. It cited falling attendance, a decline in donations and a rising number of artists refusing to appear at the venue after the Kennedy Center's board voted to add Donald Trump's name to the federally funded building.

The practical consequences were immediate. The company vacated the 2,364-seat Opera House as quickly as it could and cut the number of performances in the remainder of the season to save money. When the announcement was made, replacement venues had been identified but no leases signed. It was one of a run of exits and cancellations at the centre, alongside the suspension of a 58-year affiliation with the American College Theatre Festival and dropped engagements including Hamilton and Eureka Day; the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors broadcast drew 35 per cent fewer viewers than the year before.

In February 2026 the company published new venues and dates for the rest of the season, moving performances to Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University, the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda and the Lyric in Baltimore, and relocating its 70th anniversary gala.

The money, and the lawsuit

The split did not stay amicable. In a suit reported in late June 2026 and filed in the US Court of Federal Claims, the company alleged the Kennedy Center was wrongfully withholding more than $17 million in endowment funds, donations and other income collected on its behalf, and that a significant portion of those funds had been pledged as collateral for the centre's own line of credit. The filing also claims that by the second half of 2025 the centre had stopped delivering contracted services, including marketing, fundraising, administrative support and timely reporting on the funds.

The Kennedy Center called the claims meritless and said it intended to countersue, arguing that the opera contract had burdened it financially for more than a decade and citing an external accounting firm's figure of a $72 million deficit accumulated by the company between 2011 and 2026. Neither claim has been tested, and the dispute is unresolved as the new season opens.

What 2026-27 actually consists of

The season announced on 15 May 2026 is the first complete one planned as an independent company: seven productions across five venues in the District and Maryland. Subscriptions went on sale on 15 May, single tickets on 18 August.

November is concentrated at DAR Constitution Hall, where the company has installed what it calls the Revolutionary Stage — a thrust platform extending into the auditorium with the audience on three sides and a mixture of café and theatre seating. Puccini's Madama Butterfly opens the season on 7 November with Karah Son making her company debut as Cio-Cio-San opposite Matthew White and Michelle Mariposa, conducted by Erina Yashima. A new staging of John Adams's Nixon in China follows from 14 November, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with archival footage worked into the production, Spano conducting, and Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson as Pat and Richard Nixon; Kathleen Kim returns to Madame Mao. A concert, We the People, built from operatic excerpts on liberty, closes the run on 22 November with Fleming, Hampson and Amber R. Monroe.

The rest of the year scatters. Odyssey, a retelling with puppetry for the WNO Youth Chorus and Cafritz Young Artists, plays the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage from 18 to 20 December. The American Opera Initiative double bill WOLF | LAMBS runs on 15 and 16 January 2027 at the WNO Studio. Harman Hall at Shakespeare Theatre Company takes two March productions: the world premiere of O'Keeffe: Kiss the Sky by Christopher Tin and Kelley Rourke, with Isabel Leonard as Georgia O'Keeffe alongside Christine Goerke and William Burden, and Mozart's Idomeneo: A Trojan Tale, an immersive reworking by Zambello and Rourke led by Gregory Kunde. Verdi's La traviata closes the season at Strathmore from 29 April to 1 May 2027, with Francesca Pia Vitale and Ben Bliss under Valentina Peleggi; the final night is the annual Opera Gala. Baltimore, which had West Side Story in May 2026, is not on the schedule.

How the exile season played

The spring of 2026 was the test, and the reviews were better than the circumstances deserved. Scott Joplin's Treemonisha came to Lisner Auditorium in March in a new adaptation and orchestration by Damien Sneed with additional dialogue and lyrics by Kyle Bass, directed by Denyce Graves shortly after her retirement from singing.

Robert Ward's The Crucible opened at Lisner on 21 March in Zambello's 2016 Glimmerglass staging, its wooden walls reconfigured for household, courtroom, forest and jail, with Spano conducting an orchestra divided between the pit and backstage because the hall could not hold it in one place. Ryan McKinny's John Proctor was the performance critics singled out, with J'Nai Bridges as Elizabeth and Lauren Carroll as Abigail; OperaWire called it an evening to remember while noting that Ward's score rarely lets the tension drop.

A fully staged West Side Story followed at Strathmore on 14 and 15 May and at the Lyric in Baltimore on 17 May, conducted by Marin Alsop with a 50-piece orchestra, Ryan McCartan as Tony and Shereen Pimentel as Maria. Reviewing the Baltimore performance, Arnold Saltzman described a production that had turned a disaster into a success and read the company's relocation as a moral choice. That is the register most of the coverage has settled into: the artistic standard has held, and the argument is now about buildings and money rather than singing.