Opera Maestro Ensnared in Brazilian Graft Scandal Lashes Out at Accusers

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/americas/brazil-corruption-scandal-john-neschling.html

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SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Before taking the helm of this city’s opera house, John Neschling wielded the maestro’s baton in European venues from Lisbon to Vienna. He resurrected the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, moving it into an imposing concert hall housed in an abandoned railway station. He composed the scores of films such as “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

The only child of Austrian émigrés who fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape the Nazis, Mr. Neschling, 70, emerged as one of Brazil’s most towering contemporary figures in the classical music world, winning praise for his conducting prowess even as critics blasted his domineering management style.

But in a stunning fall from grace, Mr. Neschling now finds himself entangled in the far-reaching ethical crisis consuming one Brazilian institution after another as a graft scandal engulfs the Theatro Municipal, the high-culture landmark in São Paulo’s old center where he was named artistic director in 2013.

The authorities fired him in September after administrators who embezzled millions of dollars from the theater implicated Mr. Neschling in illicit enrichment schemes. Scrambling to salvage his reputation, Mr. Neschling is now going on the warpath against his enemies, upending a rarefied classical music scene in Brazil, where art and politics have long been intertwined.

“I’m being attacked by liars and thieves in a witch hunt of the lowest caliber,” Mr. Neschling said in an interview, arguing that he is the victim of a smear campaign by self-acknowledged lawbreakers who are seeking leniency through plea deals. “It makes me sad that I have to undergo this humiliating situation at my age, after having done so much for this country.”

Elsewhere in Brazil, prominent figures across the ideological spectrum are also lashing out at the plea agreements used to advance corruption inquiries, notably the colossal graft investigation around Petrobras, the national oil company. The scandal has resulted in the jailing of more than 40 construction moguls, oilmen and politicians.

Beyond the Petrobras case, the country is witnessing a staggering array of other scandals, leaving many aghast as to how graft permeates Brazilian society. Just in São Paulo, reports of a kickback scheme by cardiologists are rattling the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, one of the country’s most respected medical institutions.

Another scandal involves claims of bribes for politicians who had a hand in awarding huge contracts to supply meals in São Paulo’s public schools. In yet another jaw-dropping case, investigators charged the Rev. Osvaldo Palópito, a Roman Catholic priest and chaplain of São Paulo’s police force, of embezzling millions in tithes from his own congregants.

By taking his fight to the court of public opinion, Mr. Neschling, who has not been charged with any crimes, is questioning whether Brazil’s anticorruption crusades are entangling innocent people along with the truly guilty.

In the case involving Mr. Neschling, two administrators of the Theatro Municipal, José Luiz Herencia and William Nacked, admitted embezzling about $3 million from the opera house controlled by São Paulo’s municipal government.

After reaching plea deals, the two men claimed that Mr. Neschling illicitly profited from hiring international opera stars through agents who also represented Mr. Neschling to arrange conducting jobs abroad, placing the maestro in the cross hairs of investigators.

His accusers also claimed that Mr. Neschling made illicit gains from arranging a project with La Fura dels Baus, a theatrical group from Barcelona, which never materialized.

“The public prosecutors don’t have the slightest idea about opera administration,” said Mr. Neschling, contending that he was an easy target for such accusations because of envy over his success.

“There are hundreds of examples in history of people who have been attacked because they shine by those who are mediocre,” he said, comparing his predicament to the venomous campaign to drive the composer Gustav Mahler from his post as conductor of the Vienna State Opera a century ago.

Supporters of Mr. Neschling have rushed to his defense, pointing out that up until now he has never been accused of doing anything illegal in a career spanning five decades.

“My personal knowledge makes it impossible to believe that his personal dealings have even a hint of illegality or dishonesty,” said Yoram David, an Israeli conductor who has worked with Mr. Neschling. “If this man is collaborating with his own agents, this is perfectly normal in the music world.”

Still, by Mr. Neschling’s own admission, his abrasive, hard-charging personality did him few favors before he was caught in the whirlwind of the Theatro Municipal scandal.

As the grandnephew of both the composer Arnold Schoenberg and the conductor Artur Bodanzky, Mr. Neschling was born into a family immersed in classical music. At 17, he left Rio de Janeiro for Vienna to study music and remained there for nine years, living much of the time like a pauper.

“Vienna drives anyone crazy,” he once told an interviewer, describing how he scraped by on a meager scholarship, enduring loneliness while taking refuge in psychoanalysis.

He returned to Brazil, composing the soundtracks for prizewinning films, but still felt Europe’s tug. He returned to conduct at the Opéra de Bordeaux in France, the Teatro Nacional in Lisbon and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy. In 1996, he moved to São Paulo, taking on the task of reviving the state’s moribund symphony orchestra.

Mr. Neschling won plaudits for raising the orchestra’s quality and moving it into a state-of-the-art concert hall in a cavernous, remodeled train station. He wed Patricia Melo, 54, a writer whose 2003 novel, “Black Waltz,” describes an obsessive, divisive, misanthropic Brazilian conductor who leaves his first wife to marry a younger woman.

At the orchestra, some of the musicians called Mr. Neschling dictatorial. He chafed at the criticism, quarreling with a board that was overseeing a succession plan. He called José Serra, the São Paulo governor who is now Brazil’s foreign minister, “a spoiled boy,” before the authorities fired him in 2009.

“Look, I deliver the goods,” Mr. Neschling said. “Then the Brazilian mediocrity that’s never delivered says, ‘Oh well, if that’s the way he does it, I can do it, too.’ But they can’t.”

São Paulo’s mayor, Fernando Haddad, gave Mr. Neschling another chance by naming him the Theatro Municipal’s artistic director in 2013 with an annual salary of more than $500,000. Mr. Neschling set about improving the theater, which was designed by the architect Ramos de Azevedo and completed in 1911, mixing Renaissance, baroque and Art Nouveau styles.

With all the grace of a bull in a china shop, Mr. Neschling likened the opera house’s restoration to “putting lipstick on a corpse.” But he lifted the theater’s international profile, luring opera stars like the Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri and the Argentine tenor Marcelo Álvarez.

Still, Mr. Neschling retained his capacity to alienate those around him. Carlos Augusto Calil, a former municipal official overseeing cultural policies in São Paulo, likened Mr. Neschling’s browbeating style of leadership to “an empire of fear,” arguing that the conductor neglected plans intended to use the Theatro Municipal to enhance access to dance and choral projects beyond traditional opera.

“Neschling took over with his customary arrogance, embracing an outdated concept of the opera from the previous century,” Mr. Calil said. “Now he wants to cast himself as the victim of politicians, of traitors, of those who are mediocre, of the country.”

Mr. Neschling is stewing as he contends with such views, contemplating how to react to the tumultuous bookend of what had been an illustrious career.

“Two types of animals inhabit my soul,” Mr. Neschling recently wrote in a Facebook post. “In one corner, sheep are grazing and doves are fluttering. In the other, wild dogs are growling, yearning to mangle anything that gets in their way.”

“I confess,” he continued, “that I don’t know what to do with the little sheep and white doves.”