• Testimonials. These are all allegations of sexual harassment against Placido Domingo: "I was always touching you"
  • Revelations: Nine women accuse Plácido Domingo of sexual harassment
  • Reactions: Pilar Jurado, president of the SGAE: "Plácido Domingo is a perfect gentleman"
  • Profile: The impossible trail of Patricia Wulf, the woman who accuses Placido Domingo

The Philadelphia Orchestra has withdrawn its invitation for the tenor Plácido Domingo to appear at his inaugural concert on September 18.

The announcement came a few hours after the AP news agency reported that nine women had accused the Spanish tenor of sexual harassment over the past three decades.

" We are committed to providing a safe , supportive, respectful and appropriate environment for the Orchestra and staff, for collaborating artists and composers, and for our audience and communities," an orchestra spokesman said in a statement.

The Philadelphia concert would have been Sunday's next performance in the United States . Representatives of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the San Francisco Opera, where Sunday will also be presented this fall, have not yet responded to requests for comment.

The Salzburg Festival supports the tenor

The president of the Salzburg Festival, Helga Rabl-Stadler, has supported Plácido Domingo , accused by nine women of sexual harassment, and confirmed that the Spanish tenor will act there, as planned, on August 25 and 31 at the opera Verdi Luisa Miller .

"I have known Plácido Domingo for more than 25 years. From the beginning I have been impressed, along with his artistic ability, his respectful ways with all the workers of the Festival," Rabl-Stadler said in a statement sent to Efe .

The president points out that Plácido Domingo "knows all the names, from the doorman to the secretary (of the Festival) and thanks every little help." "If the accusations against him had also occurred at the Festival headquarters, I would have known for sure," he adds.

As a trained jurist, Rabl-Stadler emphasizes that the principle of in dubio pro reo always applies to her, a Latin phrase expresses the principle that in the absence of evidence, the accused should be favored .

"I consider it objectively incorrect and humanly irresponsible to take a final judgment at this time and make decisions on that basis," said the head of the Festival on Sunday's performance at Luisa Miller on August 25.

The artistic director, Markus Hinterhäuser, the commercial director, Lukas Crepaz, and herself agree that Plácido Domingo sings, as planned, in Luisa Miller at the 2019 Festival, concludes the statement signed by the president.

Festival sources have explained to Efe that Domingo is not in Salzburg at the moment.

The Salzburg Summer Festival, one of the most prestigious in Europe , has a long artistic relationship with Plácido Domingo, which lasts more than half a century. Precisely last year Sunday reached an unprecedented record in the history of the Opera , giving life to its character 150 with Zurga in The Pearl Fishermen of Bizet.

Les Arts will wait for the resolution of the accusations

The Palau de Les Arts de València announced on Tuesday that it will wait for the resolution of the case by the accusations published on the tenor Plácido Domingo to "act accordingly and adopt some convenient measure, thus preserving the presumption of innocence."

This has been indicated in a statement in which the Valencian auditorium " strongly condemns any kind of workplace harassment or sexist violence in society, and in the world of culture in particular."

The Valencian audience wanted to emphasize that Les Arts "does not have any direct employment relationship with Plácido Domingo" , of which he emphasizes that "he only collaborates in the selection of students of the Center of Perfection, together with a commission of experts formed by eight more people ". There is the circumstance that Plácido Domingo presided recently, on June 1, the final auditions for singers who will integrate the eleventh promotion of artists of the center that bears his name and whose headquarters is in the Palau de Les Arts de València .

"Given the accusations published regarding the figure of Plácido Domingo, we will wait for the resolution of the facts to act with consequence and adopt some convenient measure, thus preserving the presumption of innocence," said the auditorium statement, which underlines that in Les Arts "There is no record or complaint of any kind of harassment towards the staff of the institution."

Precisely this past Sunday, the Palau de Les Arts advanced its new season, which will cover the lyrical repertoire from the Baroque until the 20th century in the nine titles that make up the operatic programming of the 2019-2020 season and announced, as main protagonists, a Placido Domingo, Anna Pirozzi, Iréne Theorin, Aylin Pérez, John Osborn, Alex Esposito and David Hansen.

The Spanish tenor has fixed his return to the stage of Les Arts to star in the month of December Nabucco de Verdi, with which he will present in Valencia a new role of baritone in his repertoire , Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

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