Ousted Metropolitan Opera conductor and accused sex abuser James Levine is trying to discredit one of his alleged victims by dredging up a “love” letter his teen accuser once wrote to him.
In his lawsuit against the opera company, the famed, wild-haired maestro presented excerpts from a 1989 missive penned by then 19-year-old Ashok Pai in which the teenager writes, “I WANT ACCESS” and “I LOVE YOU.”
“It is unimaginable that a person would write that he desperately wants to see and loves the person who sexually abused or harassed him,” according to Levine’s amended legal complaint which seeks at least $6.6 million in damages.
The Post first revealed in December Pai’s complaint to Illinois police that Levine sexually abused him as a boy. The Met suspended Levine a day after the expose, and fired him in March following an internal investigation. Levine sued three days later.
Pai alleges that the illicit relationship began when he was 15 and the maestro was a guest conductor at the Ravinia Music Festival outside Chicago while the teen lived nearby. He claims the encounters progressed from “uncomfortable” hand-holding to sexual acts and continued for years.
Pai told The Post last week that Levine using the letters to try to clear his name was “sad.
“He’s not apologetic. He has an inability to see that he’s done anything wrong.
“The letters were the result of (my) many, many times acting in a way that was unhealthy for me,” said Pai, who is now 48 and lives in Brooklyn. “I don’t dispute the letters, but their spin on them makes my case even stronger. Because of the abuse, I was hooked on him like a drug, even though it was bad for me.”
Levine’s court complaint also includes excerpts from letters sent by James Lestock, who has said Levine began an abusive relationship with him when he was a 17-year-old music student.
The Met counter-sued Levine in May saying the maestro “engaged in sexually abusive and harassing conduct toward numerous artists” including teenagers.
Levine contends in his suit that Met general manager Peter Gelb had a “long-held plan” to oust him and used the sex scandal to do it.
A Met spokesman said the opera company disagreed with that premise.
Levine’s new court filing spells out the scandal’s cost to him, starting with his yearly $400,000 contract as the Met’s music director emeritus plus $27,000 for every performance he conducted and another $2,900 a week in “rehearsal expenses.” He was to conduct at least 39 concerts during the 2017-18 season.
He also lost a $50,000 gig to conduct Verdi’s “Requiem Mass” for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra; $75,000 to guest conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra; guest spots with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra through 2022 that paid up to $58,000 each; and $500,000 to serve for five years as conductor laureate at the Ravinia festival.
Additionally, Knopf Doubleday canceled a book deal with an $82,500 advance.
Additional reporting by Isabel Vincent