Eleven new women accuse Placido Domingo of sexual harassment

• Revelations: Nine women accuse Plácido Domingo of sexual harassment
• All the accusations. Placido Domingo "was always touching you"
• Reactions. "Plácido Domingo is a perfect gentleman"
• Profile: The impossible trail of Patricia Wulf, the woman who accuses Placido Domingo
• Opera: The Philadelphia Orchestra cancels Plácido Domingo's performance after accusations of sexual harassment
• His wife Marta Ornelas sacrificed his career to be next to Placido Domingo

A total of eleven new women accuse Plácido Domingo of sexual harassment, according to the testimonies provided today by the agency The Associated Press , which adds these complaints to those presented by nine, eight singers and a dancer, on August 13 and that He has put the 78-year-old Spanish tenor at the center of the controversy.

Angela Turner Wilson is one of those eleven women who have offered their testimony to the aforementioned agency and refers to the 1999-2000 season of the Washington Opera, when she was 28 years old and was called to sing at the opera El Cid together with Plácido Domingo, who was also the artistic director of the company. "I knew that this was going to be the beginning of great achievements for me, " the singer recalled recently.

Before going on stage, one of the afternoons of representation, in the makeup room Plácido Domingo got up from his chair, placed himself behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. She looked at him in the mirror when, suddenly, she slipped her hands under her bra, inside her robe and touched her breasts, she recalled, according to the agency's story today.

"It hurt," the singer told The Associated Press . "It wasn't soft, it squeezed me hard." She added that after Sunday she turned around and left, leaving her stunned and humiliated .

It has been 20 years for Angela Turner Wilson to dare to publicly tell her experience that adds to the stories of last August that accuse the Spaniard of sexual harassment, lascivious behavior and of harming them professionally if they rejected him.

"I know that if I miss the opportunity and keep quiet, I will feel 20 times worse," he said. "It's a huge burden to be carrying her a lifetime . And every time another #MeToo story comes out, I fall into a dark place and I'm sick of it."

Sunday's response to the August 13 accusations that his conduct with women was "always welcomed and agreed upon" encouraged Wilson to publicly publicize his experience with him while denying the justification of the tenor of that "the norms and standards by which, justifiably, we are measured today are very different from those of the past."

What woman will want him to touch her breasts? And it hurt, "said the singer." And after that I had to go on stage and act as if I was in love with him. "

Several theater employees told the AP how they protected the young women from the legendary singer while management turned a blind eye.

The stories as a whole reinforce the image of an industry in which the behavior of the current director general of the Los Angeles Opera was an open secret and the young women were defenseless, the report cited.

"Defame"

"The AP's ongoing campaign to defame Plácido Domingo is not only misguided but devoid of ethics. These new accusations are full of inconsistencies and, like the initial report, in many respects, simply wrong," said Nancy Seltzer.

"Because the investigation is ongoing, we will not give details, but we emphatically reject the misleading image that the PA is trying to paint Mr. Domingo," the tenor spokeswoman said, rejecting the new testimonies that point to him as a sexual stalker.

Melinda McLain , who was the production coordinator for the Los Angeles Opera in the inaugural season 1986-87 and also worked at the Houston Opera House with Sunday, told the AP that she was struggling to prevent the singer from staying in the rehearsal rooms alone with young women, even when he asked for it, and tried to hire male assistants .

"We created all kinds of tricks to keep him away from certain singers," McLain recalled. "I would never have sent a woman to accompany him in his dressing room . "

McLain said another strategy was to invite Domingo's wife, Marta, to the cast parties "because if Marta was there, he was behaving."

In the last three weeks, "numerous employees of the Los Angeles Opera costume department," where Domingo held various positions since the 1980s, contacted the AP agency to say "they were trying to prevent women from entering the dressing room Sunday even recently, in the 2016-2017 season, and that the management knew for years of the singer's behavior ".

"My supervisor told me they were preventing attractive young people from entering their locker room because of their behavior," said one employee who asked not to be identified because she continues to work in the opera and fears reprisals. He added that Domingo was known for "getting too close to girls, hugging, kissing, touching them and being physically affectionate with them," according to another statement.

The Los Angeles Opera has hired outside lawyers to investigate the allegations included in the AP report.

Some of the women told the AP that some strategies to distract Domingo were asking him about his grandchildren, laughing nervously and pretending they didn't understand when he asked for their phone numbers or pressed them to meet later.

For his part, baritone Robert Gardner contacted the AP to say that he observed Domingo's behavior with mezzo-soprano Patricia Wulf, who was initially the only woman willing to give his name . Wulf worked with Domingo and Gardner in 1998 at the Washington Opera House, where the teacher was also CEO, and the baritone confirmed that Domingo insisted on inviting Wulf.

"I saw him placing himself in the rehearsal rooms or in the halls so that he could approach her, and it was obvious that she was avoiding him," Gardner said.

Both Wulf and Angela Turner Wilson said they were silent about the singer's behavior to management for fear that no one would believe them or that they would be penalized.

Wilson has counted the numerous occasions in which he rejected him. "I kept saying no. I said 'No, I will not meet you. No, I will not go to your apartment'. No, no, no" although the singer persisted in his attitude and asked for kisses. "I need a kiss. This is a very demanding role and I need a kiss from you to give me strength," he told her before the performances.

Wilson, who in spite of having received from the Washington Opera the Artist of the Year award was not rehired by this institution, handed the AP copies of his diary, in which he wrote that the essays for El Cid began on 4 October 1999. She attributes it to the influence of Placido Domingo.

His career lasted another decade before devoting himself mainly to teaching. He sang in three seasons for the New York City Opera and other halls in the country, such as Dallas and Boston.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Placido Domingo
• culture
• Opera
• sexual harassment

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