‘The Crucible’ Review: Washington National Opera’s Nimble Reset

Following its split with the Kennedy Center, the company has ably adapted to George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, where it is presenting a gripping staging of Robert Ward’s version of the Arthur Miller classic.

By 

Heidi Waleson

March 23, 2026 at 5:01 pm ET

A scene from the Washington National Opera production of ‘The Crucible.’ SCOTT SUCHMAN

Washington

The Washington National Opera, which opened its production of Robert Ward’s “The Crucible” (1961) on Saturday, did not expect to be presenting some of its 70th-anniversary season back where it started, in George Washington University’s 1,482-seat Lisner Auditorium. But WNO’s situation at its Kennedy Center home following President Trump’s takeover of the venue last year became increasingly untenable. Artists canceled, donors and audience members stayed away, the Center’s staff was slashed, and its new president, Richard Grenell, demanded a “revenue neutral” model for every show, meaning each one had to pay for itself, an impossible task for an opera company. As contingency planning last summer, the company embarked on a stealth tour of potential venues for its season’s operas, and on Jan. 9 it announced that it would leave the Center after 55 years in residence. “We had soft holds on the venues,” says Francesca Zambello, the company’s artistic director. “On Jan. 10, we locked them down.”

The pivot has been challenging. The theaters (Lisner for “The Crucible” and “Treemonisha,” which played earlier this month, as well as Lyric Baltimore and the Music Center at Strathmore for “West Side Story,” both larger, in May) were not available for the number of dates originally scheduled; the company is nonetheless paying its artists for their full contracts. Production adaptations are required. Ticketing systems are different. The company had to immediately launch an independent website, reconstruct its mailing list from scratch—the release of its data, along with $20 million in endowment funds, is still being litigated—and sell tickets for its shows. Most critically, it had to turbocharge its fundraising. The end of the affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center, which provided about $3 million a year, the use of the theaters, and staff support, means that WNO must now pay for those services itself, adding substantially to its former $25 million to $30 million annual budget.

WNO has been buoyed by an outpouring of support. The three performances of “Treemonisha” sold out, and donors—old and new—have stepped up. The company plans to continue to produce at the same activity level as in the past. Programming for the 2026-27 season, which will be announced in May, is unchanged: The company’s pattern of seven shows of different sizes will be mounted in five theaters in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. “The big change will be the creativity required to adapt into multiple venues,” says Timothy O’Leary, WNO’s general director and CEO. “In some cases, we are going to be investing in reconfiguring the venues so we can do things that will be exciting visually and experientially for the audience.”

WNO’s spring 2026 operas are all American, saluting the nation’s 250th birthday. “The Crucible” was substituted for “Fellow Travelers,” an excellent 2016 work about the 1950s “Lavender Scare” that was withdrawn last March by its creators, who were concerned that it might be sabotaged by the new Kennedy Center administration’s crusade against “woke” programming. Ward’s opera has a related theme: It is based on the 1953 Arthur Miller play that used the 17th-century Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the McCarthy era.

Ms. Zambello’s production, adapted from the one at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2016, has Puritan costumes, gray clapboard walls, and simple furnishings that depict dwellings, a courtroom and a jail. (Neil Pateldesigned the set, Jessica Jahn the costumes, and Jason Lynch the lighting; the original lighting designer was Mark McCullough, who died in December.) It capitalizes on the opera’s ensemble framework. Bernard Stambler’s libretto has a lot of text, but the piece is clearly and tightly constructed, and the action rarely slows as the numerous characters seem to pile onto each other, building the atmosphere of mass hysteria.

Yet in this staging the madness works on multiple levels. The antics of the “bewitched” girls are so clearly feigned that the audience can recognize the corrupt motivations of the powerful people who are feeding the frenzy. These include the wealthy Thomas Putnam (baritone Chandler Benn), who wants the land that will be forfeited by convicted witches, and the imperious Judge Danforth (tenor Chauncey Packer), who can’t afford to lose face by admitting that the conflagration he has fanned is based on fraud and “private vengeance.” Under Ms. Zambello’s pithy direction, those ensnared in the juggernaut can only lose.

Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny was eloquent as John Proctor, the opera’s flawed hero, cogently depicting his struggles with guilt. John’s old affair with the poisonous Abigail Williams (a viciously bright-voiced Lauren Carroll), ringleader of the girls, puts his wife, Elizabeth (the poignant, troubled J’Nai Bridges), in danger. Mezzo Ronnita Miller made the enslaved Tituba, the only character with actual conjuring experience, a properly alien presence. As truth-telling victims, mezzo Michelle Mariposa was staunch and gentle as Rebecca Nurse while Nicholas Huff brought a vigorous, exciting tenor to Giles Corey. Other notable singers included bass-baritone Robert Frazier as the Rev. John Hale, who realizes the truth too late, and soprano Kresley Figueroa as the treacherously weak-willed Mary Warren.

Conductor Robert Spano ably managed the intricate ensembles, the opera’s relentless drive, and an orchestra pit so small that some players had to perform amplified from a separate room. The Kennedy Center’s other resident ensembles will soon be dealing with unfamiliar spaces and circumstances as well: After July 4, the Center will close for two years for unspecified renovations, making all its inhabitants itinerant.