• Culture Plácido Domingo: "The public will decide when and where I will sing for the last time"

  • The Reading Plácido Domingo: "My biggest mistake has been to remain silent for too long"

Plácido: an open secret

is the title that

Salvados

gave his program last night.

Voices, indeed, those of the victims who in 2019, through an investigation by the Associated Press agency, uncovered the abuses they allegedly suffered for years by the most famous tenor in the world,

Plácido Domingo

.

From the mezzo-soprano

Patricia Wulf

, the first who dared to show her face, and the soprano

Luz del Alba Rubio

, to

the first testimony of a Spanish singer

.

That's what Gonzo and his team did, give voice.

The case is known to all public opinion.

He filled pages and pages with headlines and sent the career of the most outstanding tenor of the 20th and early 21st century into a state of reeling.

Last night,

it was just listening to them

.

Listening to what happened, how they suffered, at what point they are, how they have overcome it, why they did not denounce them in court...

"

It's a David against a Goliath

. How dare you question the word of a god," said the soprano

Luz del Alba Rubio

last night , who denounced

Plácido Domingo

for harassment.

All of them, including the lawyer of one of the "survivors",

Debra Katz

, reflect the same thing: fighting against the power of

Plácido Domingo

was impossible.

Although the account of most of them has been heard several times during these three years since the case broke out, the television testimony of all of them, especially that of the first Spanish singer to recount the alleged harassment she suffered by the tenor, does not It is going to mean that the case goes one step further, but it reopens the well of darkness of

Plácido Domingo

.

David vs. Goliath: the Plácido Domingo case

The program contacted the tenor's son several times to have his testimony, but received no response.

It was not a program to place

Plácido Domingo

on target and shoot left and right.

They tried to give him the chance to give his version, to speak, and he also gave a voice to his fans and to personalities who appeal to the presumption of innocence.

Because, indeed, the almost 30 women who reported the harassment suffered

have not brought the tenor to justice

, but they have managed to open different investigations and all with the same conclusion: yes, it happened;

yes, there were witnesses;

yes, they were all aware and

did you participate with their silence?

They all agree: it is fear.

"He is preventing the institutions from punishing him," said last night the man who leaked the AGMA

investigation to the media

, the American union of musical artists who, after the Associated Press investigation was made public, carried out their own.

"

Plácido Domingo

paid $500,000 so that AGMA's conclusions would not be made public (...) It is what we call quid pro quo. They negotiated with

Plácido

how the results of the investigation would be communicated," reveals baritone

Samuel Schulz

, former vice president of AGMA, and the 'deep throat' that filtered all the conclusions:

"I felt a responsibility with the women, the public, the union and with anyone"

In fact, it has been thanks to

Schulz

that

Salvados

has managed to put in front of the screen several of the singers who denounced the harassment they experienced three years ago, but also, something that all of them and all the people linked to the case have an impact on, tenor protection from different areas.

"The fact that he was not prosecuted does not mean that he did not do something wrong, that he did not harass women," lawyer

Debra Katz

, recognized for her work as a defender of #MeToo, declared last night.

It was she who explained why "the survivors", as women who have suffered sexual harassment are called in the US, have not taken

Plácido Domingo

to court : "No one has wanted to take him to court, but I imagine that

if he It was against them after this program things would change

."

In fact,

Debra Katz

, before representing several of them, submits them to a polygraph:

"Not because she doesn't believe them, but because others won't believe them

. "

Devastating phrase to address why these women did not file a complaint at the time, why they have not brought the case to court and why many of them still do not want to show their faces or tell it.

"We do not speak so that this man pays with money.

We speak so that other voices join, so that other situations appear

, "said the soprano

Luz del Alba Rubio

during her meeting with Gonzo .

And other voices, perhaps the most anticipated, were heard.

The first Spanish singer to report harassment

"The first thing they tell you is don't get on an elevator alone with

Plácido Domingo

."

Who speaks is the first Spanish singer to make this harassment public.

And

it wasn't in the 90s, "it was in the 2000s"

.

Salvados not only gave voice to

Luz del Alba Rubio

or

Patricia Wulf

, she issued the testimony that can mean a before and after because it is the first by a Spanish singer, who allegedly suffered sexual harassment from

Plácido Domingo

in Spain, in a Spanish theater .

They are no longer just women from the other side of the pond, it is already here.

"The first time he asked me in front of other people if he could put his hand in the back pocket of my pants. The first thing that came to my mind was that I was telling him so he wouldn't feel uncomfortable, so he wouldn't be offended.

You stay in shifting sands

", recounted the Spanish "survivor".

There will be those who say, one more, without proof, that they are getting on the bandwagon.

But that's what

Salvados

is for , just like Katz's office was and is, the opera singers union or the Los Angeles opera, to check.

Salvados

investigated the accusations of the Spanish singer and verified with witnesses of her story and with people to whom she told what happened at the time, that her story was real.

With her voice distorted and hidden behind the shadows, the singer described not only the situations that she experienced and of which everyone around her was aware, but also those that other classmates experienced: "One morning one of the classmates was deranged, crying non-stop because he was calling her on the phone. He wanted me to go to his hotel.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but then I felt relieved

."

There were others and it was her.

To the first, the one in the pocket, a second was added.

It was at the end of a performance, when the lights go out and the curtain begins to fall: "

He kissed me on the mouth. I couldn't avoid him, he caught me by surprise and I didn't want him

. The act had ended and the curtain was coming down. march asking and now what, and now what, and now what...".

If there is something that they all agree on, it is that feeling of

'if I don't do what you ask, if I annoy you, if I reject you' I will pay the consequences'

.

Many of them paid for it, many of them not only experienced the harassment but also the consequences of saying no.

"The other person I know of him does not correspond to what others want to see. Since 1999 I have called at any time with my husband by my side and said that my rival should not be angry, to find him everywhere.

This continuous process is growing

"Whoever is wrong gives you a kiss closer to the lip than other things.

It is always being on a tightrope, not to get angry, if he gets angry there are problems ,"

Luz del Alba

said last night

.

"He told me: 'look, I would like to see that mischief you did in Belgium'. We can see it at my house'. There it was a very ugly situation. That night was hard because he threw himself on top of me, but I was also big and I had warned a friend so that if I called her she would come looking for me

. What do you have to pay? Is that the price you have to pay?

", the Uruguayan tenor Luz del Alba María recounted through tears.

Some endured out of fear and others, like the Spanish singer who recounted last night that harassment allegedly suffered in the year 2000, was always clear that before going through this, she preferred to leave her profession.

It was a price she was not going to pay:

"He is Plácido Domingo and you are nobody. He is innocent and that is why I am in the dark

. "

"He told me: 'you could have had a good career'. And I told him: 'teacher is married' and he told me, 'yes, but that's something else'

. wants

".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • The sixth

  • Placido Domingo