Find tour dates and live music events for all your favorite bands and artists in your city! Get concert tickets, news and more!

  • Analytics
  • Tour Dates

Opera Guild Senior Officer Resigns Over Domingo Investigation, Alleging Quid Pro Quo

Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo (Fotografías - archimadrid.es [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
975 0

(CelebrityAccess) — A senior elected official from the trade union that conducted the investigation Plácido Domingo has resigned, alleging that the union had kept parts of the investigation confidential as they were negotiating a $500,000 settlement with the opera star.

According to Schultz, keeping the results of the investigation confidential was a key component of the agreement between the union and Domingo.

“This is a quid pro quo — silence in exchange for money,” Samuel Schultz, a baritone singer and now former Vice President of the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA).

Leonard Egert, the union’s national executive director, refuted the Schultz’s claims, telling the New York Times that the union never planned to publicize the details of the investigation.

“We at A.G.M.A. never were going to publicly release the details of the investigator’s report,” he told the Times. “And the reason for that is important: The witnesses who came forward expressly conditioned their participation in the investigation on keeping their anonymity.”

That seems to be borne out by the official statement on the investigation released by the AGMA last week, which said that it found Domingo had engaged in “in inappropriate activity, ranging from flirtation to sexual advances, in and outside of the workplace.”

However, the Associated Press reported that women who spoke to investigators outlined more serious inappropriate behavior by Domingo that included groping, unwelcome kisses and late-night phone calls.

Egert conceded that representatives for Domingo had withdrawn from negotiations over the settlement following the leak to the Associated Press.

“Obviously Mr. Domingo’s team was not in favor of releasing details of the allegations, probably for different reasons,” Egert told the Times.


Join CelebrityAccess Now