Conductor to take time out after punching bass backstage during Berlioz Festival
Sir John Eliot Gardiner has cancelled all of his engagements until next year following an incident in which he hit a singer backstage. The eminent English conductor, 80, has revealed that he will be taking time out from his professional activities for a period of reflection and, in consultation with his medical advisors, will be focusing on his mental health while engaging in a course of counselling.
The incident took place in late-August at the Berlioz Festival near Grenoble, France, where Gardiner was conducting his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and Monteverdi Choir in the opera Les Troyens, staged over two successive nights.
During the first evening, he was incensed when bass William Thomas left the stage on the wrong side. When he addressed Thomas, 29, after the performance, witnesses say that the altercation led to the conductor slapping and punching the singer in the face. Gardiner promptly pulled out of the second night of the production, which was conducted instead by Dinis Sousa, as was Gardiner’s scheduled performance of the same opera at the BBC Proms in early September.
‘I am taking a step back in order to get the specialist help I recognise that I have needed for some time,’ says Gardiner, whose demanding standards as a conductor have regulary been described by performers as bordering on the excessive. ‘I want to apologise to colleagues who have felt badly treated and anyone who may feel let down by my decision to take time out to address my issues. I am heartbroken to have
