Sexual Abuse, Classical Music Edition, Part ???

Here are some links that've been floating around open browser tabs for too damn long.

• Music's Perpetually Open Secret: Allegations against Professor Dan Welcher at the University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music went on for 18 years before being addressed.
• Women accuse opera legend Domingo of sexual assault.
• LA Opera investigation finds sexual harassment allegations against Placido Domingo credible
  
• Plácido Domingo had 'inappropriate conduct' with many women, opera finds
  
• Domingo barely apologized, then walked the "apology" back two days later.

You can look up all of the allegations against Domingo, which came from 20 women who'd worked with him at various opera companies. A least one was a dancer and the rest were singers. I have privately heard some stuff about his behavior - warnings given to singers along the lines of don't be alone with him, don't let him in your dressing room alone, etc. This would have been the whisper network doing its job.

In this NY Times article, we find LAO claiming the following:

Los Angeles Opera, however, said its investigation had “found no evidence that Mr. Domingo ever engaged in a quid pro quo or retaliated against any woman by not casting or otherwise hiring her at L.A. Opera, especially since casting and other hiring decisions are complex, performance-specific and determined by multiple people.” 

Here's an NPR article that quotes the Met saying this:

We take accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of power with extreme seriousness. We will await the results of the investigation into Plácido Domingo's behavior as head of the Los Angeles Opera before making any final decisions about Mr. Domingo's ultimate future at the Met. It should be noted that during his career at the Met as a guest artist, Mr. Domingo has never been in a position to influence casting decisions for anyone other than himself.

A couple of comments:

1. The Met was absolutely craven not to make its own investigation.

2. Re LAO's hiring claim: Yeah, they're complicated, but as General Manager and a big star, Domingo would certainly have had influence on casting. I'd love to see the basis of the claim that there was never any retaliation or quid pro quo.

3. Re the Met, hahahahahahahaha. Of course he was. You don't have to be part of the Met's administration to have influence. It's easy to imagine a conversation between, say, Levine and Domingo in which Domingo says "Oh, if you're thinking about casting for [opera], I recently worked with [soprano] / heard [soprano] elsewhere, and she just wouldn't be right for that role. Have you considered [some other soprano]?" And somehow, [some other soprano] gets the job. I mean, I have heard of at least one singer, a singer who was never GM of even one opera company, putting their foot down about a particular piece of casting and getting their way, not at the Met, and that singer was never a star on level of Domingo.

As you know, San Francisco Opera got out ahead of this by canceling a planned concert celebrating Domingo as soon as the news broke. This suggests a couple of things to me: the company wanted to do the right thing, and perhaps they knew of credible allegations from women who'd worked with Domingo at SFO. Also, ahem, Opera Magazine's "We've heard that..." column mentioned that SFO would open the 2020-21 season with Macbeth, which turned into Rigoletto by the time of the season announcement. One might wonder who was cast in the title role of the Scottish opera.