{"id":18156,"date":"2026-01-24T20:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/renee-fleming-cancels-kennedy-center-shows-amid-trump-era-changes\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T20:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T20:22:15","slug":"renee-fleming-cancels-kennedy-center-shows-amid-trump-era-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/renee-fleming-cancels-kennedy-center-shows-amid-trump-era-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Ren\u00e9e Fleming cancels Kennedy Center shows amid Trump-era changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1769204939000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                                                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/nixon-china-paris-opera-fleming-9c64fccef6761802a5fc6e7daec5487c\">Ren&eacute;e Fleming<\/a><\/span>  has withdrawn from two scheduled May appearances at the <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-kennedy-center-congress-republicans-34c48872cf3a5cfee996aca73ec7141f\">Kennedy Center,<\/a><\/span>  the latest in a wave of cancellations since <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/donald-trump\">President Donald Trump<\/a><\/span>  ousted the previous leadership and the new leadership&rsquo;s announcement that the venue would be renamed the Trump Kennedy Center.<\/p>\n<p>The Grammy-winning soprano was to have appeared with conductor James Gaffigan and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her decision is unsurprising; a year ago she resigned as &ldquo;Artistic Advisor at Large,&rdquo; citing the forced departures of Kennedy Center Chair David Rubenstein and its president, Deborah Rutter. The center itself referred to &ldquo;a scheduling conflict&rdquo; as the reason she dropped out of the May concerts.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;A new soloist and repertoire will be announced at a later date, and the remainder of the program remains unchanged,&rdquo; reads a statement on the Kennedy Center web site that was posted this week. Fleming did not immediately respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n<p>Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bela Fleck and Issa Rae are among the many other artists who have called off events at the Kennedy Center, which has been part of Trump&rsquo;s broader attack on what he calls &ldquo;woke&rdquo; culture. Earlier this month, the Washington National Opera announced it was severing ties with the Kennedy Center, where it had performed since 1971. <\/p>\n<p>The musical presenters Vocal Arts DC, who earlier this week called off three Kennedy Center concerts because of &ldquo;financial circumstances,&rdquo; announced Friday they had found new venues for such scheduled performers as tenor Benjamin Bernheim and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson. Bernheim and Matheson will appear next month at George Washington University, where the Washington National Opera is staging two operas this spring.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/renee-fleming-kennedy-center-cancellations-9ed539d9e42c47d700196e72beb5ca26\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; Ren&eacute;e Fleming has withdrawn from two scheduled May appearances at the Kennedy Center, the latest in a wave of cancellations since President Donald Trump ousted the previous leadership and the new leadership&rsquo;s announcement that the venue would be renamed the Trump Kennedy Center. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}