Washington National Opera sues the Kennedy Center to recover $17 million in donations

The Washington National Opera filed a suit connected Thursday that demands much than $17 cardinal from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The opera institution claims it is owed millions successful donations that person been withheld.

The suit claims that aft the opera institution and the Kennedy Center parted ways successful January, halfway officials person not returned much than $17 cardinal successful gifts and donations that beryllium to the opera company. The suit lists the national authorities arsenic a suspect due to the fact that the Kennedy Center was established by Congress.

According to the suit, the opera institution and the Kennedy Center had a longstanding declaration successful which WNO produced its operas astatine the Kennedy Center, which successful return, provided a fig of services and different enactment for the opera institution including managing its donations.

In precocious 2025, aft astir 15 years of affiliation, the suit claims that the Kennedy Center stopped performing the obligations of their agreement, which included marketing, fundraising and administrative support, arsenic good arsenic timely reporting connected the maturation of the opera company’s funds. When the opera institution requested the Kennedy Center remedy the issue, halfway officials asked to sever ties.

“Five months person present passed since the termination of the affiliation, and the Kennedy Center inactive has not returned the funds to WNO,” reads the suit. “To the contrary, according to the Kennedy Center’s Chief Financial Officer, the Kennedy Center has enactment a important information of WNO’s wealth astatine hazard by utilizing it to collateralize the Kennedy Center’s enactment of credit.”

In an emailed connection responding to the lawsuit, Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, told The Times that the declaration betwixt the opera location and the halfway financially burdened the halfway for much than a decade. The connection claimed that taking into relationship the company’s endowment, an outer accounting steadfast calculated that the opera institution had “accumulated a $72 cardinal shortage to the center” betwixt 2011 and 2026.

“The Center has acted transparently and successful the champion interests of the nationalist passim this process,” the connection reads. “This suit is meritless, and we program to prosecute a countersuit to support the institution.”

The ineligible enactment comes during a tumultuous clip for the Kennedy Center. Last year, President Trump fired the committee and appointed himself president of the Kennedy Center.

In December, President Trump’s sanction was installed connected the exterior of the halfway the time aft his handpicked committee of trustees voted to alteration the institution’s sanction to the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” Last month, a national justice ordered President Trump’s sanction to beryllium removed from the exterior of the gathering wrong 2 weeks and a halt to the Trump administration’s planned two-year closure of the venue.

On Friday, the court-ordered deadline for removing his sanction sparked wide involvement and crowds gathered extracurricular the center. A unrecorded cam was besides placed adjacent the structure.

The Times arts editor Jessica Gelt contributed to this report.