• Controversy: Plácido Domingo resigns from singing again at the New York Opera for accusations of sexual harassment

In the United States he became perpetual, immortal. When he first stepped on a stage in the land of the Yankees, in 1961, Placido Domingo did not go beyond being a young man of 20 years with budding star spells. On the other side of the Atlantic, he got used to dazzle, to fill theaters with the sole excuse of his wake, to turn the Metropolitan or the Los Angeles Opera House into his guest house.

That's why no one expected him to take the closing in New York, in a rehearsal of 'Macbeth', after singing consecutively for 51 years in a temple like the Met. More than 700 interpretations still contemplate him , with 169 appearances as director, a record difficult to overcome. But the icing on the cake has been swallowed by its dark side. The decline of his American empire could not have been more bitter. In addition to his enormous talent, Domingo will be remembered for the description that some media have given him in recent weeks, a specialist in harassing how much moderately attractive women he was shot.

There remains the presumption of innocence, of course, in addition to the investigation opened by the Los Angeles Opera, which still directs the tenor, but so far the testimonies of 20 women accusing him of harassment , of improper behavior, and of abuse of authority for decades in American opera.

Two of them even gave their faces giving names and surnames. Angela Turner Wilson , a soprano who shared the stage with Sunday 20 years ago in Washington, said the Spaniard grabbed her breasts tightly in her dressing room and never mentioned the incident again. He explained that he was so afraid to speak for his career, that until now he did not want to take the step. Today, he teaches singing in Dallas.

In that city of Texas began Sunday to make the Americas. He premiered at the Dallas Civic Opera the same year as his debut in Mexico as the protagonist in an opera, in 1961. He sang the role of Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor with Joan Sutherland. He liked it and a year later he repeated opera at Forth Worth, the beginning of a monumental career in the US.

Four years later he presented himself to the tests for the New York Opera and entered as a last minute replacement of a sick tenor in 'Madama Butterfly', in Puccini. In February 1966 he had the honor of premiering, as a protagonist, the theater of the new Lincoln Center in New York , an indissoluble idyll for five decades.

Before the end of the decade, he had already sung in San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia, enlarged his legend in strides. Hence, a celebrity among the non-operatic hosts when he sang 'Perhaps Love' in duet with John Denver in 1981. A year later, 'Newsweek' hung the poster of the 'opera king' on the cover of his magazine.

Over the years, he was incorporating the task of director of companies such as Washington, in 1996, and Los Angeles in 2000 . In California, until now, he was considered a figure as a fall from the sky, responsible for a substantial part of the prestige that now has that place in the national and international scene.

The majority of accounts of the last round of complaints against Domingo come from members of that institution, fearful of being alone with the tenor converted into baritone. All that legacy is reeling now.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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