Metropolitan Opera suspends conductor James Levine after sexual abuse claims

On Sunday, The Times identified two other men who it said alleged that they’d had sexual encounters with Levine beginning in the summer of 1968, when they were teens at a music school in Michigan. Levine, then 25, was a teacher at Meadow Brook School of Music and assistant conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra.

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One of the men, James Lestock, told The Times that during a discussion in his dorm room Levine asked him to remove his clothes.

“This would be natural and honest and expand my outlook on the world,” Lestock recalled Levine’s having said, according to The Times. “My initial response included the word ‘no.’ I was not interested in that. But he ignored that, and pursued the point, and convinced me to let him masturbate me.”

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