A world-renowned conductor will no longer lead a planned performance at the BBC Proms next month after allegedly punching and slapping a member of his choir for supposedly entering the stage incorrectly.
The BBC said that Sir John Eliot Gardiner had decided to withdraw from the performance of Berlioz’s The Trojans, or Les Troyens, on September 3. Dinis Sousa, Gardiner’s deputy, will step in to conduct the performance.
Gardiner, 80, is alleged to have assaulted the singer William Thomas, 29, a bass, after an opera performance at the Berlioz Festival in France on Tuesday night.
The conductor, who was due to perform with the celebrated Monteverdi Choir, which he founded, at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, called the singer a
