Editorial: We knew Deborah Rutter at the Chicago Symphony. She did not fail the Kennedy Center.
When Deborah Rutter became president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2003, she inherited an institution with debt from a massive renovation project and that was suffering a serious drop in attendance and thus box office revenue.
By the time she left in 2014 to assume the presidency of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the CSO was 'on its most solid financial footing in years, with one of the world's most renowned conductors, Riccardo Muti, serving as its music director to raise the artistic bar while drawing large audiences to programs at Symphony Center and beyond,' reported Heather Gillers and Mark Caro in the Tribune that year.
Here is what Rutter said to those reporters about her job in the nation's capital: 'Fundamentally what we do is we care and nurture for music and musicians and try and steward an institution to serve an audience, so at the very core it's exactly the same job. But the world around us changes.'
The sting was in the tail of that quotation. Boy, did it ever change. Probably far more than Rutter possibly could have anticipated.
After a decade in her new job, she was effectively fired by a president of the United States, bound and determined to move the arts center in a direction in line with the priorities of his administration.
Trump did not just say 'thank you for your service and we are going in a new direction,' which arguably was within his right to do, given the unique relationship the Kennedy Center has with the federal government. He attacked Rutter for what he called her 'bad management,' accusing her of programming stuff he personally did not want to see (to each his own) and of wasting millions of dollars. 'I don't know where they spent it,' Trump said last week. 'They certainly didn't spend it on wallpaper, carpet or painting.'
The last time we were in the Kennedy Center, just a few weeks ago, we did not witness a problem with the decor, but we did appreciate the programming. Indeed, the verdict on Rutter's tenure when we were there was that she had been a highly effective arts administrator and the polar opposite of a narrow ideologue. Look at what she told NPR after her firing: 'I am a professional arts attendee. I am a believer in the work of the artist. I am not a propagandist. I am not a politician. Art speaks for itself. Art sometimes doesn't make you feel comfortable, but it is telling the story of who we are and all artists, as all Americans, have the freedom of expression.'
Indeed they do. Indeed they must. As all Americans, Democrats and Republicans, should understand.
Those words match our long experience with Rutter in Chicago, when she was a distinguished steward of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of our most precious civic assets. We were sad to lose her in 2014 and regret that her important work in our nation's capital had so unpleasant an ending.
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The Real Message Behind Les Misérables
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. On February 7, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts suffered a presidential coup. Donald Trump filled its board of trustees with loyalists and declared himself its 'amazing Chairman.' On June 11, he is set to celebrate the dawn of what he has called a 'Golden Age in Arts and Culture' by attending a Kennedy Center performance of one of his favorite musicals, the globally popular adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Misérables. Several cast members plan to boycott the opening. Perhaps they find it strange or even disconcerting that Trump is a big fan of Les Mis. Having declared of his Kennedy Center, 'It's not going to be woke,' why would he enjoy a tale in which the official victimization of society's underdogs is contrasted with the civilizing power of love, charity, and forgiveness? The term misérables can translate roughly to 'the wretched,' 'the dirt poor,' or even 'the scum of the Earth.' The frequent Trump epithet losers would be a suitably pejorative modern equivalent. This despised underclass is pitted against a punitive regime that honors bullies, sycophants, and plutocrats. They are not the sort of people who might expect compassion and understanding from the current administration. I find the gaudy, mass-market musical's appeal to Trump ironic but not surprising. Since it premiered on London's West End in 1985, the show, with its rousing anthems and its tear-jerking tale of victory over oppression, has thrilled more than 100 million people. We know that Trump has a weakness for bombastic 1980s musicals, and Les Mis is certainly that. Having spent four years writing a biography of Hugo, I can't help but find it a sweetened, antiseptic version of his weird, digressive underworld of moral and literal sewers. The original book would surely bamboozle and exasperate Trump if he ever undertook the journey through its 1,500 pages. [Read: America now has a minister of culture] The author himself wouldn't seem to hold much appeal for the leader of the MAGA movement. The president mentioned Hugo in 2018 at a White House dinner for Emmanuel Macron and the French delegation: 'This is the divine flame, which Victor Hugo wrote that 'evil can never wholly extinguish,' and which 'good can make to glow with splendor.'' Trump was referring to the shared military glories of France and the United States from the American Revolution through the Second World War. In fact, the words were taken from a description of the central character of Les Misérables, destitute following his conviction for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. The narrator wonders whether Jean Valjean's soul has been destroyed, or whether an immortal 'spark' (not 'flame') has survived his dehumanization by a vindictive justice system. When Les Misérables was published in 1862, Hugo was an outcast. The founder of two distinct periods of Romanticism, he was the world's most famous living writer and an international symbol of freedom and democracy. By then, at the age of 60, he had spent 10 years in exile after opposing the coup d'état led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-crowned emperor of France who reigned as Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. Hugo, as a refugee in the Channel Islands, was an embarrassment to the British government. The intelligence services of France and the United Kingdom considered him a socialist menace. Spies reported his dealings with suspected immigrant terrorists. His diatribe against 'Napoléon le Petit' was smuggled across the English Channel in walking sticks, sardine tins, and women's underwear. Miniature copies were concealed in souvenir plaster busts of Napoleon III. The exiled poet was criticized for his arrogant attempts to influence British and American foreign policy. He was mocked for his poor English and his wild appearance, as he recalled in his notebooks: 'To the English, I am shoking, excentric and improper'; 'I oppose the death penalty, which is not respectable'; 'I am an exile, which is repellent, and on the losing side, which is infamous.' I would venture to say that Hugo would not be made welcome in the Oval Office today: 'I look like a workman,' he wrote, and 'I fail to wear my tie in the correct fashion.' Les Misérables is one of the last universally read masterpieces in Western literature. In its own day, it was as popular as its musical adaptation would be in the next century. In France, it was bought even by people who had never learned to read. It was devoured by soldiers in the trenches of the American Civil War. Like all great works of art, it has a mind and momentum of its own. [Read: The fame of Victor Hugo] This ostensibly simple tale contains labyrinthine complexities and contradictions. Hugo had been a monarchist in his youth and then became a moderate liberal. At the time of the 1832 revolt, which takes up almost one-fifth of Les Misérables, he was a property-owning family man firmly opposed to violent protest. 'We should not allow barbarians to bespatter our flag with red,' he wrote in his diary. The barricade at the heart of the novel and the musical is actually a scene from the savagely repressed uprising of June 1848. Hugo had just been elected to the National Assembly as a right-wing moderate. When the rioting broke out, he fought with the forces of law and order against the insurgents, whom he considered innocent but misguided. These were the starving unemployed of the Paris slums, the malodorous and degraded masses that polite society called 'les misérables.' He took prisoners and was directly responsible for deaths and deportations. Tormented over his culpability, he had a crise de conscience and joined the socialist opposition to the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Hugo became the mascot and inspiration of liberation movements in Greece and Italy and throughout Central and South America, so it is fitting that the musical's opening and concluding song, 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' has been chanted in this century by antigovernment protesters in China, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Belarus. Less obviously appropriate is the adoption of Les Mis by Trump and the MAGA movement. No artistic genre is the exclusive property of one faction. As the Trump administration demonstrates, forms of moral discourse evolved by left-wing thinkers can serve the purposes of right-wing ideologues. The novel and the musical both have roots in popular 19th-century entertainment—vaudevilles, comic operas, and newspaper serials. Both were sneered at by middle-class reviewers and adored by the public. The MAGA reading of Les Misérables is just the latest example of its populist appeal. It also typifies the volatile nature of political buzzwords. [Read: Trump's Kennedy Center debut: 'Les Mis' and six-figure checks] Misérables was an insult that French insurgents picked up and brandished as a banner. By the same process, after Hillary Clinton called Trump's supporters 'deplorables' during the 2016 election campaign, her dismissive term inspired the digital backdrop of a Trump rally in Miami: Under the words les deplorables, a doctored image from the musical showed a crowd storming a barricade, waving the French Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes. That evening, the crowd sang a MAGA version of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' In 2025, the U.S. Army Chorus sang this appropriated anthem of popular revolt at the White House Governors Ball. Hugo would likely have been repelled and fascinated by Trump's demagoguery, his rambling mendacity, his grammatically illogical but easy-to-follow oratory. The writer might have been reminded of Napoleon III, who hovers in the background of the novel as a sinister, clownish figure. Two significant differences are that Napoleon III had a long-standing interest in justice, and that he was never envious of Hugo's fame. After granting him and his fellow outcasts amnesty in 1859, Napoleon III lamented the great man's decision to remain in exile. In 1862, he allowed Les Misérables to be advertised and sold in France, leading his government to review its penal and industrial legislation and to concern itself with the exploitation of women and orphans, as well as the education of the poor. Trump's attacks on universities, the arts, and free expression increase the likelihood that any future American equivalent of Les Misérables will also have to be written in exile. But none of this knotty history need spoil Chairman Trump's triumph when he sits in the royal box at the Kennedy Center and hears the people sing for his pleasure. Article originally published at The Atlantic
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3 hours ago
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What Victor Hugo Would Make of Trump
On February 7, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts suffered a presidential coup. Donald Trump filled its board of trustees with loyalists and declared himself its 'amazing Chairman.' On June 11, he is set to celebrate the dawn of what he has called a 'Golden Age in Arts and Culture' by attending a Kennedy Center performance of one of his favorite musicals, the globally popular adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Misérables. Several cast members plan to boycott the opening. Perhaps they find it strange or even disconcerting that Trump is a big fan of Les Mis. Having declared of his Kennedy Center, 'It's not going to be woke,' why would he enjoy a tale in which the official victimization of society's underdogs is contrasted with the civilizing power of love, charity, and forgiveness? The term misérables can translate roughly to 'the wretched,' 'the dirt poor,' or even 'the scum of the Earth.' The frequent Trump epithet losers would be a suitably pejorative modern equivalent. This despised underclass is pitted against a punitive regime that honors bullies, sycophants, and plutocrats. They are not the sort of people who might expect compassion and understanding from the current administration. I find the gaudy, mass-market musical's appeal to Trump ironic but not surprising. Since it premiered on London's West End in 1985, the show, with its rousing anthems and its tear-jerking tale of victory over oppression, has thrilled more than 100 million people. We know that Trump has a weakness for bombastic 1980s musicals, and Les Mis is certainly that. Having spent four years writing a biography of Hugo, I can't help but find it a sweetened, antiseptic version of his weird, digressive underworld of moral and literal sewers. The original book would surely bamboozle and exasperate Trump if he ever undertook the journey through its 1,500 pages. The author himself wouldn't seem to hold much appeal for the leader of the MAGA movement. The president mentioned Hugo in 2018 at a White House dinner for Emmanuel Macron and the French delegation: 'This is the divine flame, which Victor Hugo wrote that 'evil can never wholly extinguish,' and which 'good can make to glow with splendor.'' Trump was referring to the shared military glories of France and the United States from the American Revolution through the Second World War. In fact, the words were taken from a description of the central character of Les Misérables, destitute following his conviction for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. The narrator wonders whether Jean Valjean's soul has been destroyed, or whether an immortal 'spark' (not 'flame') has survived his dehumanization by a vindictive justice system. When Les Misérables was published in 1862, Hugo was an outcast. The founder of two distinct periods of Romanticism, he was the world's most famous living writer and an international symbol of freedom and democracy. By then, at the age of 60, he had spent 10 years in exile after opposing the coup d'état led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-crowned emperor of France who reigned as Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. Hugo, as a refugee in the Channel Islands, was an embarrassment to the British government. The intelligence services of France and the United Kingdom considered him a socialist menace. Spies reported his dealings with suspected immigrant terrorists. His diatribe against ' Napoléon le Petit ' was smuggled across the English Channel in walking sticks, sardine tins, and women's underwear. Miniature copies were concealed in souvenir plaster busts of Napoleon III. The exiled poet was criticized for his arrogant attempts to influence British and American foreign policy. He was mocked for his poor English and his wild appearance, as he recalled in his notebooks: 'To the English, I am shoking, excentric and improper '; 'I oppose the death penalty, which is not respectable'; 'I am an exile, which is repellent, and on the losing side, which is infamous.' I would venture to say that Hugo would not be made welcome in the Oval Office today: 'I look like a workman,' he wrote, and 'I fail to wear my tie in the correct fashion.' Les Misérables is one of the last universally read masterpieces in Western literature. In its own day, it was as popular as its musical adaptation would be in the next century. In France, it was bought even by people who had never learned to read. It was devoured by soldiers in the trenches of the American Civil War. Like all great works of art, it has a mind and momentum of its own. This ostensibly simple tale contains labyrinthine complexities and contradictions. Hugo had been a monarchist in his youth and then became a moderate liberal. At the time of the 1832 revolt, which takes up almost one-fifth of Les Misérables, he was a property-owning family man firmly opposed to violent protest. 'We should not allow barbarians to bespatter our flag with red,' he wrote in his diary. The barricade at the heart of the novel and the musical is actually a scene from the savagely repressed uprising of June 1848. Hugo had just been elected to the National Assembly as a right-wing moderate. When the rioting broke out, he fought with the forces of law and order against the insurgents, whom he considered innocent but misguided. These were the starving unemployed of the Paris slums, the malodorous and degraded masses that polite society called ' les misérables.' He took prisoners and was directly responsible for deaths and deportations. Tormented over his culpability, he had a crise de conscience and joined the socialist opposition to the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Hugo became the mascot and inspiration of liberation movements in Greece and Italy and throughout Central and South America, so it is fitting that the musical's opening and concluding song, 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' has been chanted in this century by antigovernment protesters in China, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Belarus. Less obviously appropriate is the adoption of Les Mis by Trump and the MAGA movement. No artistic genre is the exclusive property of one faction. As the Trump administration demonstrates, forms of moral discourse evolved by left-wing thinkers can serve the purposes of right-wing ideologues. The novel and the musical both have roots in popular 19th-century entertainment—vaudevilles, comic operas, and newspaper serials. Both were sneered at by middle-class reviewers and adored by the public. The MAGA reading of Les Misérables is just the latest example of its populist appeal. It also typifies the volatile nature of political buzzwords. Misérables was an insult that French insurgents picked up and brandished as a banner. By the same process, after Hillary Clinton called Trump's supporters 'deplorables' during the 2016 election campaign, her dismissive term inspired the digital backdrop of a Trump rally in Miami: Under the words les deplorables, a doctored image from the musical showed a crowd storming a barricade, waving the French Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes. That evening, the crowd sang a MAGA version of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' In 2025, the U.S. Army Chorus sang this appropriated anthem of popular revolt at the White House Governors Ball. Hugo would likely have been repelled and fascinated by Trump's demagoguery, his rambling mendacity, his grammatically illogical but easy-to-follow oratory. The writer might have been reminded of Napoleon III, who hovers in the background of the novel as a sinister, clownish figure. Two significant differences are that Napoleon III had a long-standing interest in justice, and that he was never envious of Hugo's fame. After granting him and his fellow outcasts amnesty in 1859, Napoleon III lamented the great man's decision to remain in exile. In 1862, he allowed Les Misérables to be advertised and sold in France, leading his government to review its penal and industrial legislation and to concern itself with the exploitation of women and orphans, as well as the education of the poor. Trump's attacks on universities, the arts, and free expression increase the likelihood that any future American equivalent of Les Misérables will also have to be written in exile. But none of this knotty history need spoil Chairman Trump's triumph when he sits in the royal box at the Kennedy Center and hears the people sing for his pleasure.
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