“Met Opera Accuses James Levine of Decades of Sexual Misconduct” (nytimes) is a twist on the usual sex-at-work litigation:
Two months ago, the conductor James Levine, having been fired by the Metropolitan Opera for sexual misconduct, sued the company for breach of contract and defamation. Now the Met is suing him back, arguing in court papers filed on Friday that Mr. Levine harmed the company, and detailing previously unreported accusations of sexual harassment and abuse against him.
The filing paints the clearest picture yet of the investigation that led the Met to dismiss Mr. Levine, its longtime music director and its artistic backbone for more than four decades. The company says it found credible evidence that Mr. Levine had “used his reputation and position of power to prey upon and abuse artists,” citing examples of sexual misconduct that it says occurred from the 1970s through 1999, but does not name the victims.
The Met’s suit says that the company “has and will continue to incur significant reputational and economic harm as a result of the publicity associated with Levine’s misconduct.” The company was already in a difficult financial position before the scandal broke, battling the high costs of putting on grand opera amid a box office slump.
On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service Inc., the credit rating agency, downgraded the Met’s bonds to Baa2 from Baa1, citing its “thin liquidity and the fact that it has not yet been able to reach its endowment fund-raising targets combined with ongoing labor costs pressures and capital needs.” One of the Met’s strengths, it noted, was its strong donor support, which the company relies on.
Why would anyone give the Met money now? If Michigan State had to pay out $500 million recently (see Michigan State settlement means that we will start to see inflation from #MeToo?) and the Met has only $200 million in net assets, isn’t the enterprise already insolvent? A donation today will simply go to a plaintiff who says that he was abused by James Levine and the management knew or should have known about it. (Or maybe the management is being careful not to investigate anything that happened unless the statute of limitations has run?)
Is it possible that this opera company will actually die before its audience does? Or can they go Chapter 11 and ditch their pension obligations (pension for a $310,000/year stagehand cannot be cheap!) as well as the long tail of sex-related liability?
Related:
Our Uncle Carl and Aunt Ruth were some of the few remaining season subscribers, and they just moved from Westchester to a CCRC in the Midwest. Our father still listens to Live from the Met on Saturdays, but gone are the days (due to health issues at age 87) when he trekked to Manhattan largely to see 2-3 operas. About 25 yrs ago, he did run into Hillary (sans Bill) in the Met elevator. She gushed to potential voter and opera aficionado Dad that she adores the opera.