Charles Dutoit
Charles Édouard Dutoit (born 7 October 1936) is a Swiss conductor. He is currently the principal guest conductor for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia and co-director of the MISA Festival in Shanghai. In 2017, he became the 103rd recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award. Dutoit held previous positions with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Tokyo NHK Symphony and the Orchestre National de France. As of 2017, conductor emeritus of the Verbier Music Festival Orchestra. He is an honorary member of the Ravel Foundation in France and  the Stravinsky Foundation in Switzerland. In December 2017, following allegations of sexual assault, the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies cancelled his engagements. In a statement, Dutoit denied the charges. Biography. Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. He studied there, and graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Genève, where he won first prize in conducting. Then he went to the Accademia Chigiana in Siena at the invitation of Alceo Galliera. In his younger days, he frequently attended Ernest Ansermet's rehearsals and had a personal acquaintance with him. He also worked with Herbert von Karajan at Lucerne as a member  of the festival youth orchestra and studied at Tanglewood. Dutoit began his professional music career in 1957 as a viola player with various orchestras across Europe and South America. In January 1959, he made his debut as a professional conductor with an orchestra of Radio Lausanne and Martha Argerich. From 1959 he was a guest conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. After this, he was the conductor for Radio Zurich until 1967, when he took over the Bern Symphony Orchestra from Paul Kletzki, where he stayed for 11 years. While head of the  Bern Symphony, he also conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico from 1973 to 1975, and Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony from 1975 to 1978. Dutoit was principal guest conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra in the early 1980s. In 1977, Dutoit became the artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM). In the words of Glasgow-based music critic Kate Molleson: "A 20-year recording contract with Decca made the MSO the most recorded orchestra in the world, and the best of these recordings — Ravel's "La Valse" and "Daphnis et Chloe", Debussy's "La Mer", Stravinsky's French-period  ballets — remain unsurpassed." Reaction to Dutoit joining the Montreal Symphony was positive. Peter G. Davis stated that Dutoit transformed the Montreal Symphony. New York Magazine wrote similarly about Dutoit, adding that he was noted for the championing of new Canadian music. Throughout these years, he called without success for a new symphony concert hall for Montréal. Dutoit resigned from the Montreal Symphony in April 2002, with immediate effect, after the Quebec Musicians Guild complained about what it called Dutoit's "offensive behaviour and complete lack of respect for the musicians". In January 2018, the OSM acknowledged ignoring complaints from musicians  of verbal and 'psychological harassment' by Dutoit dating back to the 1990s. He did not return to the OSM as a guest conductor until 2016, in a concert at the new "Maison Symphonique de Montréal". Dutoit has received more than 40 international awards and distinctions, including two Grammy Awards (United States), several Juno Awards (Canada), the Grand Prix du Président de la République (France), the Prix mondial du disque de Montreux (Switzerland), the Amsterdam Edison Award, the Japan Record Academy Award, and the German Music Critics' Award. He and the OSM made many recordings for the Decca/London label. Dutoit  first conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980. From 1990 to 1999, he was music director of the orchestra's summer concerts at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. From 1990 to 2010, he was artistic director and principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer festival in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1991, he was made an Honorary Citizen of the city of Philadelphia. In February 2007, Dutoit was named the orchestra's chief conductor and artistic adviser, for a contract of four years, effective September 2008. Following the conclusion of his contract in Philadelphia in 2012, the orchestra  named him its conductor laureate, as of the 2012–13 season. Since 1990, Dutoit has directed the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. From 1991 to 2001, Dutoit was Music Director of the Orchestre National de France, with whom he made a number of recordings and toured extensively. In 1996, he was appointed principal conductor and in 1998 music director of Tokyo's NHK Symphony Orchestra. For the NHK television network, he made a series of documentary films for the young people called "Cities of Music" in Venice, St Petersburg, Tokyo, Buenos Aires (plus Rio de Janeiro and Manhaus), New York, Vienna , Budapest, Leipzig, Dresden, Paris and London. In 1997, he was made an honorary Officer of the Order of Canada. He is also one of a handful of non-Canadian citizens to be a Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Québec. In April 2007, Dutoit was named principal conductor and artistic director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as of 2009. In October 2019 he was scheduled to stand down as the RPO's principal conductor and to take the title of Honorary Conductor for Life of the orchestra, but instead he resigned in January 2018. Between 2009 and 2017, Dutoit  also served as the music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland. In April 2014, Dutoit received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Classical Music Awards. He was also made an honorary member of Fondation Igor Stravinsky in Geneva and Fondation Ravel in Monfort l'Amaury, France. In September 2018, Dutoit was named principal guest conductor of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, effective May 2019. In late 2021, Dutoit withdrew from a scheduled subscription concert of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra due to his infection with COVID-19. Personal life. Dutoit shuns publicity and protects his private life from the media . He has been married four times. His first marriage was to Ruth Cury, by whom he has a son, Ivan, who lives in Santa Monica, California, with his family, who in turn has two children: Anne-Sophie and Jean-Sebastian. He was also married to the world-renowned Argentine concert pianist Martha Argerich (with whom he has a daughter, Anne-Catherine) and to the Canadian economist Marie-Josée Drouin. He is currently married to Canadian violinist Chantal Juillet. Allegations of sexual assault. In 2017 four women accused Dutoit of sexually assaulting them between the late 1970s and 2010. The alleged  incidents occurred in a variety of places. One of the allegations was contested by witnesses. The allegations were made by Paula Rasmussen, mezzo-soprano (1991, Los Angeles), Sylvia McNair, soprano (1985, Minnesota), Jenny Q. Chai, pianist. A singer with the Philadelphia Orchestra claimed that Dutoit assaulted her in 2006 in upstate New York and again in 2010 in Philadelphia." A 24-year-old musician with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago alleged that Dutoit forced himself on her in 2006. In January 2018 a British theatre administrator said that when she was an intern Dutoit sexually assaulted her at Tanglewood twenty  years earlier." In March 2018, the Boston Symphony said that Allan's allegations were "credible" and that three other women "credibly described incidents in the 1980s and 1990s in which they, too, were victims of DuToit's sexual misconduct. Other women also claimed assault. Reaction. In January 2018 DuToit resigned from his position as artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Several other orchestras either cancelled engagements or severed ties with Dutoit, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra (which also removed his title of conductor laureate), the  Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In the same month Canadian CBC Radio/CBC Radio Two adopted a policy of no longer crediting Dutoit as conductor when it played his recordings.