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Met Suspends Conductor James Levine After 3 Men Accuse Him Of Sexual Harassment

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By Helen Chernikoff December 4, 2017

Another powerful man in an iconic position at the top of his field has lost his job after being accused of sexual harassment, with one small difference — this time, the people making the allegations are also men.

The Metropolitan Opera suspended its beloved conductor James Levine, 74, on Sunday, reported the New York Times, after three men made public accounts that he had sexually abused them when they were teenagers. The accusations go back to 1968, when according to Chris Brown, a bass player in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Levine molested him at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan. Brown was 17 at the time; Levine was 25.

Met general manager Peter Gelb announced that the company was suspending its relationship with Levine, canceled his pending engagements and asked an outside law firm to investigate.

Accusations of sexual harassment between people of the same gender have been relatively rare in the flood unleashed by the New York Times’ reporting on movie maker Harvey Weinstein in October. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s running list is current up to December 1.

Contact Helen Chernikoff at [email protected] or on Twitter @thesimplechild

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

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