The Italian tenor was sent home from a Japan tour by the Covent Garden company and has been banned by the Met.
But he has since appeared on home turf at La Scala and he’s now playing Werther at the Vienna State Opera.
#Metoo becomes more fragmented week by week.
photo: Michael Pöhn
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#Metoo becomes more fragmented week by week.
As it should. I’m no fan of this type of alleged behaviour but am heartily sick of trial by Twitter.
“he’s now rehearsing Werther at the Vienna State Opera”
The run has already started, first performance was on Tuesday. I’ve received a first-hand account indicating that he was not on good form at all.
Of course he wasn’t on form. The role of Werther is far to heavy for his voice. Vocally, he has no business singing it regardless of his guilt or innocence in the groping incident
I saw him in Werther at the ROH in 2016 and the role suited his voice perfectly. He’s an inconsistent performer but that was probably the best I’ve ever heard him.
The best Werther ever was Alfredo Kraus !
I didn’t express an opinion on that. I said that it was the best I’d ever heard Grigolo, out of all the things I’ve seen him in.
Very overrated tenor ,would be considered a comprimario during the 50’s and 60’s,Beppe in Pagliacci etc.
He had even less business singing Cavaradossi, but that did not stop him. The idea that one can sing anything, regardless of their natural limitations, is a sure way to vocal ruin.
So, a high-lying French lyric tenor role is ‘too (mispelt) heavy for him?
The guff one reads on SD never ceases to amaze.
Like misspelling ‘misspelt’, for example, as criticism of a misspelling.
I gotta set a spell and ponder the meaning of this exchange…..
Best Werther ever at the Met a couple of years ago.
He hasn’t been banned by the Met. He’s been “suspend(ed} with immediate effect from all future performances at the Met, pending the outcome of the ROH investigation.” At least, that is Met management’s wording in the item you ran here on September 26. If the ROH’s investigation of whatever he did to the dancer and related matters is still ongoing, then there hasn’t been anything more recent.
You have to wonder how long it could possibly take to ‘investigate’ a thing like that, and why.
This incident is alleged to have happened on stage, in full view of dozens of people. It should take at most a couple of days to interview those people and find out what they did or didn’t see.
What is there to be gained from drawing it out for months on end?
They have to doff the cap to the finger-pointing flock, don’t they?
This ‘investigation’ needed a maximum of 90 minutes, and then tell these busybodies to cluck off.
If you’ve already decided that there can only be one sensible outcome, the “busybodies” being told that their complaint had no merit, why is your position that there should be a 90-minute investigation? Why not a nine-minute investigation? Why not no investigation at all?
I’m assuming they’re now looking at his behavior as a visiting artist and his relationship with the chorus, dancers, and support personnel. The incident onstage may just have laid bare some existing tensions. That’s what the Telegraph’s report of shouting between VG and members of the chorus suggests to me, anyway. There have been some comments about his reputation in the business even here on Slipped Disc, under prior items on the topic.
A lot of the fragmentation seems to geographical ie depending on which side of the Atlantic you are.
Not really. Vienna can’t just fire him if he has a contract with them. Whatever he did (or, if he is to be believed, didn’t do) at the ROH can not be a reason to dismiss him in Vienna. The Viennese would have to show his behaviour breached his contract in Vienna to dismiss him. If he has any sense, he will understand he has to be squeeky-clean from now on.
I wonder if the top singers will begin to avoid the US and Britain to keep from being falsely accused.
I wonder if you wonder?
Instead of avoiding the US and Britain they could also consider avoiding groping and stalking.
Did you read my entire sentence? You can avoid groping and stalking but still be FALSELY accused. The system here is encouraging false accusations. That has to change. False accusers should be the ones who get banned.
You can, just like the case of Joseph Colaneri. But did you see how that turn out? Many people supported him, pointing out that the accuser had made many unfounded allegations in the past, and there was no further reporting nor investigation on the matter. If you are a real gentleman, time will prove everything.
On the other hand, many women waited decades before they become public, because as discussed in many interviews, the women reported to the management, but the managers would not care about harassment at all back in the 80s and 90s.
“The system here is encouraging false accusations.” is a blatant lie. How biased can you be?
New social movements seldom occur from the top down. The Vienna State Opera will be the last to change, but there is foment below in the German-speaking world, portents of change. The sentencing of Siegfried Mauser to prison for felony sexual assault is an example. The backlash against the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Festschrift to be published about Mauser is another example.
They don’t yet have Twitter in Austria to arbitrate these matters??? Such Luddites.
“….there is foment below in the German-speaking world, portents of change.”
Boy, you are right about that and it has almost nothing to do with sexual harassment!!
The Festschift got a scathing review in this week’s “Die Zeit”, published yesterday.
The Süddeutscher has also blasted it, and notes the questionable attempt of the Academy to distance itself from the Festschrift:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/muenchen-siegfried-mauser-musikhochschule-sexuelle-noetigung-1.4656242?fbclid=IwAR3K6c0J54CZpdGh_-ArR0uBJO0IZTmtPGzZsrLWp0Z52upEWul76EKQH5w
I expect the ‘politburo’ is behind all this banning, naming and shaming. And, of course, a localized incarnation of this same organization provides the apparatuses and ideology behind this revenge and enforced conformity. The Left has this command and control in its DNA: it merely reverts to type. The regressive Left is a terrifying force.
Report it all to the ‘central office’ and then let colleagues and friends ‘dob’ on the perpetrators.
“#Metoo becomes more fragmented week by week.”
In Europe, maybe. In the U.S. it’s doing just fine.