“For decades, Placido Domingo, one of the most celebrated and powerful men in opera, has tried to pressure women into sexual relationships by dangling jobs and then sometimes punishing the women professionally when they refused his advances, numerous accusers told The Associated Press,” writes Jocelyn Gecker in Tuesday’s (8/13) Associated Press. Tenor Domingo, 78, “also is a prolific conductor and the director of the Los Angeles Opera…. Eight singers and a dancer have told the AP that they were sexually harassed by the long-married, Spanish-born superstar in encounters that took place over three decades beginning in the late 1980s…. A half-dozen other women told the AP that suggestive overtures by Domingo made them uncomfortable…. The AP also spoke to almost three dozen other singers, dancers, orchestra musicians, members of backstage staff, voice teachers and an administrator who said … that he pursued younger women with impunity.… Only one of the nine women would allow her name to be used—Patricia Wulf, a mezzo-soprano who sang with Domingo at the Washington Opera. The others requested anonymity, saying they either still work in the business and feared reprisals or worried they might be publicly humiliated and even harassed.” Domingo issued a statement denying the allegations as “deeply troubling, and as presented, inaccurate.”
Posted August 13, 2019
In photo: Placido Domingo leads the Washington Opera and Chorus in a January 2001 rehearsal for the Verdi Requiem in Washington, D.C. (Associated Press photo/Richard Drew)
