John Eliot Gardiner will not return to Monteverdi Choir

The Board of the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras has announced that conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, founder of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, will not be returning to the organisation.

Gardiner withdrew from public music-making following an assault on bass singer Will Thomas after a performance of Berlioz opera Les Troyens at the Berlioz Festival at La Côte-Saint-André in France last August. Earlier this year Gardiner said in a statement: 'August’s incident [is] something for which I have accepted full responsibility and profoundly regret.'

Over the past year the MCO considered the possibility of a rehabilitation process, operating within the MCO’s Respect & Dignity at Work policy. It said in a statement in February: 'It is our shared aim that [Gardiner] will be in a position to return to conduct the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras later in the year,' also saying the recent award of Best Choir at the 2024 Oper! Awards was a 'deserved tribute to John Eliot's lifetime work'.

In a press release, the organisation mentioned Gardiner's 'extraordinary musical influence', stating: 'The MCO acknowledges with gratitude his monumental contribution, and holds a deep-seated commitment to honour and preserve these phenomenal accomplishments. The organisation is proud to have enabled and promoted his long and illustrious career, alongside that of many other musicians ... MCO takes seriously its obligations to protect victims of abuse and assault, and preventing any recurrence remains a priority for the organisation.'

This year has seen the ensemble perform internationally with conductors Dinis Sousa, Jonathan Sells and Peter Whelan, including the Beethoven symphony cycle in London and Paris, Bach motets in Leipzig Handel’s Israel in Egypt at the Salzburg Festival. The MCO has said it will announce new conductors to lead a new season of projects at the end of the summer.

This article was originally published by Gramophone. You can find the original version of this article here.