David Daniels performs within the title position of Handel’s Giulio Cesare on the Metropolitan Opera in 2007.

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

cover caption

toggle caption

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

David Daniels performs within the title position of Handel’s Giulio Cesare on the Metropolitan Opera in 2007.

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

David Daniels, one of many opera world’s most well-known countertenors, pleaded responsible alongside along with his husband Scott Walters on Friday in a Houston district courtroom to drugging and raping a younger vocalist in 2010.

Plaintiff Samuel Schultz was a 23-year-old graduate pupil at Rice University in Houston, Texas, when he met met Daniels and Walters at a celebration following considered one of Daniels’ performances on the Houston Grand Opera. The couple invited him to the condo the place they have been staying, and there he was sexually assaulted after a spiked drink brought on the younger singer to black out.

Daniels now faces eight years of probation for the second diploma felony, in addition to a requirement that he register as a intercourse offender for the remainder of his life. In addition, the singer is ordered to chorus from contact with Schultz. Walters faces the identical penalties.

“I am glad that the defendants have acknowledged by their guilty pleas the truth of my traumatic experience, and that this portion of my nightmarish ordeal has finally concluded,” stated Schultz in a press release shared with NPR. “I am glad that they are receiving punishments that the court deems to appropriately address the severity of their crimes.”

“We are deeply relieved that the perpetrators of this despicable crime are finally facing the consequences of their choices,” Schultz’s household stated in a press release offered to NPR. “This plea deal does not undo the monstrous events that led to this day, but we are here to love and support Samuel today and forever. We also know in a criminal legal system as broken as ours, victims rarely get justice for themselves, and our thoughts are with all victims of sexual violence.”

Daniels’ and Walters’ legal professional, Matt Hennessy, didn’t reply instantly to NPR’s request for remark.

Daniels initially denied the accusations by Schultz. “These allegations are completely false,” the countertenor stated in a press release despatched to NPR in October 2018, after Schultz went public along with his story in an interview with the New York Daily News.

Opera homes all over the world canceled Daniels’ scheduled appearances as soon as the allegations broke about his sexual misconduct. For instance, Daniels was scheduled to sing Medoro within the San Francisco Opera’s June 2019 performances of Handel’s Orlando. The firm eliminated him from the manufacturing in November 2018. The Metropolitan Opera in New York canceled Daniels’ contract to carry out in one other Handel opera, Agrippina, amid the allegations.

The singer additionally lost his job as a tenured professor of voice on the University of Michigan in 2020.