Summoned to his dressing room

In September 1991, when she was 26 and trying to build her career, Paula Rasmussen landed a principal role with the LA Opera in Les Troyens. Dutoit showed special interest in her at rehearsals, she said, prompting a veteran soprano, now deceased, to warn her to watch out for him.

Rasmussen had dealt with inappropriate behaviour before, she said, but her inner alarm bells did not sound when Dutoit summoned her. She assumed the maestro wanted to talk business.

“He called me into his dressing room right before a dress rehearsal. Over the loudspeaker: ‘Ms. Rasmussen to Mr. Dutoit’s dressing room’,” she said.

Rasmussen, 52, now an attorney in the San Francisco area, said she recalls feeling momentarily paralyzed after Dutoit grabbed her hand and stuck it down his pants and forced his tongue into her mouth.

Then came a knock on the door. The conductor opened it, she said, “and I went past him, and ran up to my dressing room.”

It was the only time she ever went to Dutoit’s dressing room unaccompanied, she said.

“He called me back repeatedly that night, and up until we opened,” Rasmussen said. “Every time he wanted to give me notes on the performance after that, somebody would go with me.”

Baritone John Atkins, who was part of the production, said he remembers Rasmussen being reticent upon getting called to Dutoit’s dressing room after the incident.

“I volunteered myself to stand at the dressing room door, as a witness, for lack of a better term, to be there while she went to get notes,” he said.

Atkins said he still remembers the cold stare from Dutoit. “He looked at me like, ‘Why are you standing here?’ And I looked at him like, ‘You know why.”’