Charles Dutoit
(c) Bruno Fidrych
French soprano Anne-Sophie Schmidt has outspoken on sexual abuse by the conductor Charles Dutoit. In an article of the newspaper L’Alsace, the singer tells how Dutoit harassed her sexually back in 1995. Dutoit, then Music Director of the French National Orchestra, had engaged Schmidt as Mélisande for a production of Debussy’s opera at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. According to Anne-Sophie Schmidt, Dutoit didn’t stop to approach her and when she didn’t favourably respond to his sexual advances, he started humiliating her in front of the orchestra. Later, when she pushed him back while being fondled and kissed in a corridor, and seeing her from that moment on only in company of her partner, Dutoit apparently became abominable and even cancelled a number of future productions with her.
In the same article Anne-Sophie Schmidt explains that following the advice of her agent, she did not sue Dutoit for career reasons.
