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Rasmussen said Dutoit summoned her to his dressing room repeatedly after attacking her, but that she never again went alone.

Baritone John Atkins, who was part of the production, said he stood guard for her after the incident “as a witness, for lack of a better term.” 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.”‘

Soprano Sylvia McNair, 61, herself a two-time Grammy winner, said Dutoit “tried to have his way” with her at a hotel after a March 1985 rehearsal with the Minnesota Orchestra.

“As soon as it was just the two of us in the elevator, Charles Dutoit pushed me back against the elevator wall and pressed his knee way up between my legs and pressed himself all over me,” said McNair who was 28 at the time. “I managed to shove him off and right at that moment, the elevator door opened. I remember saying, ‘Stop it!’ And I made a dash for it.”

I managed to shove him off and right at that moment, the elevator door opened

McNair went on to perform with many of the world’s major orchestras and opera companies and said she does not feel traumatized by Dutoit’s behaviour 32 years ago. “But what he did was wrong,” she said.

The other two accusers — both of whom say Dutoit assaulted them in 2006 — did not want to be identified, saying they feared speaking up because the power the famous maestro wields could lead to them being blacklisted from the industry.

One was a 24-year-old musician with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago when Dutoit arrived to conduct. She said he invited her to lunch at a restaurant, but then changed the venue to his suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, where he forced himself on her.