Opera star Plácido Domingo at a press convention in Moscow in Oct. 2019.
Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP through Getty Photos
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Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP through Getty Photos
Opera star Plácido Domingo at a press convention in Moscow in Oct. 2019.
Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP through Getty Photos
Classical musicians who’ve been publicly linked to disgraced opera star Plácido Domingo have been arrested in Argentina or are nonetheless needed by police in connection to an alleged crime ring. The group, which operated because the Buenos Aires Yoga College, was headed by 84-year-old Juan Percowicz. The group is accused of sexual trafficking, together with of minors, in addition to extortion and cash laundering. No costs have been introduced in opposition to Domingo.
No less than three of the people whom Argentine prosecutors have recognized as a part of the alleged crime ring have carried out or collaborated with Domingo since at the least 1995, and have carried out professionally with different main classical music artists and ensembles as properly.
An Argentine regulation enforcement official informed AP in a narrative printed Thursday: “Plácido did not commit a criminal offense, neither is he a part of the group, however reasonably he was a shopper of prostitution.” Prostitution will not be a criminal offense in Argentina.
Since Wednesday, NPR has repeatedly requested for remark from Domingo’s representatives however has not acquired any response. Individually from the Argentine investigation, greater than 20 girls have come ahead publicly since 2019 with sexual misconduct claims in opposition to the opera singer.
One of many folks arrested in relation to the crime ring in Buenos Aires is Susana Mendelievich, whom the Argentine newspaper Clarin has recognized as the lady referred to as “Mendy” in police wiretap tapes launched to media earlier this week.
Now 75 years previous, Mendelievitch is a pianist and composer. In a 2000 biography of the composer Astor Piazzolla printed by Oxford College Press, an Argentine pianist named Susana Mendelievich is talked about as having rehearsed certainly one of Piazzolla’s works in Buenos Aires with the composer and Mstislav Rostropovich, probably the most revered cellists of the twentieth century.
Although she appears to have little digital footprint of her personal, Mendelievich is talked about extensively on the web site of an Argentine-born, New York-based singer and composer based mostly in New York named Veronica Loiacono, who additionally cites her ties to Domingo at the least eight occasions on her web site, together with a photograph of the 2 singing collectively.
On Friday, the Argentine newspaper El Diario recognized Loiacono and a girl named Verónica Ángela “Loia” Iácono as being the identical individual. Iácono, who’s believed to be residing within the U.S., is nonetheless needed by police in connection to the alleged crime ring.
NPR contacted a cellphone quantity attributed to Loaicano’s agent; an workplace quantity listed by no means linked to a machine or to an individual, regardless of a number of makes an attempt. The one that responded by textual content stated that they have been unavailable to remark earlier than publication.
Per Loiacono’s personal web site, she and Mendelievitch, together with two male Argentine musicians, check with themselves as a composing “group” who’ve co-written an opera, a symphony and a ballet, amongst different works. Loicano’s website additionally states that the 4 have carried out with such famend musicians because the late violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin and conductors Daniel Barenboim, the late Georg Solti and Zubin Mehta, in addition to Domingo.
Mendelievitch and Loiacono’s composing companions are listed as an oboist named Mariano Krauz and the late violinist Rubén González. González, who died in 2018, served as concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1986 till 1996.
Krauz has a restricted on-line presence exterior of Loiacono’s web site. Along with his final identify spelled “Kraus,” nonetheless, there are mentions of him in at the least two opinions from the mid-Nineteen Nineties of performances within the U.S.
On Friday, the Argentine newspaper El Diario recognized Krauz/Kraus as stage names of Mariano Krawczyk, one of many males arrested by Argentine police final week as a part of the alleged crime ring.
Loiacono, Mendelievitch and Kraus are talked about in a 1996 evaluation from the Argentine newspaper La Nacion of a efficiency they gave with Domingo in Buenos Aires.
One other point out of Kraus is expounded to a efficiency he gave as a soloist with the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra in November 1995, led by González. In a disparaging evaluation, a Baltimore Solar critic referred to as Kraus a performer “who bopped onstage carrying a flaming crimson leisure swimsuit…jaws dropped throughout me,” including: “Any person in high quality management was asleep on this one.” The work he carried out was excerpts of a symphony by González referred to as Dionisia y Lobo Solitario (Dionysus and the Lone Wolf). The Solar‘s critic wrote that the piece was “a loopy quilt of kitschy encounters with big-band swing, Viennese waltzes, blues, a rumba, klezmer and, of all issues, Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik!”
Regardless of the horrible evaluation from Baltimore simply months earlier than, Kraus additionally appeared with the Nationwide Symphony Orchestra the next July performing the identical symphony, which the Washington Submit described in a largely unfavorable evaluation as “a form of oboe-driven Spanish klezmer music.”
A 1995 opera referred to as Cartas Marcadas, whose music was additionally written by the 4, was based mostly on a e book written by the alleged crime group’s chief, Juan Percowicz, and devoted to Yehudi Menuhin. In response to a 1995 article in La Nacion, Domingo praised the work, and included the opera’s overture in a live performance of his personal. Inside that article, La Nacion additionally talked about that a number of of the opera’s collaborative group have been concerned within the Buenos Aires Yoga College.
