Conductor Sues Madrid’s Opera House For Slander

Jesús López Cobos, the former music director of the Teatro Real, is suing the theater and its artistic director, Gérard Mortier, for a formal apology and €50,000 in damages because Mortier allegedly told an Austrian newspaper that he declined to renew López Cobos’s contract. (The maestro says he made the decision to retire from the position.)