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

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Photographs

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Jack Vartoogian/Getty Photographs

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

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Photographs

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

Plaintiff Samuel Schultz was a 23-year-old graduate pupil at Rice College in Houston, Texas, when he met met Daniels and Walters at a celebration following certainly one of Daniels’ performances on the Houston Grand Opera. The couple invited him to the condominium the place they have been staying, and there he was sexually assaulted after a spiked drink precipitated 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. As well as, the singer is ordered to chorus from contact with Schultz. Walters faces the identical penalties.

“I’m glad that the defendants have acknowledged by their responsible pleas the reality of my traumatic expertise, and that this portion of my nightmarish ordeal has lastly concluded,” mentioned Schultz in a press release shared with NPR. “I’m glad that they’re receiving punishments that the court docket deems to appropriately tackle the severity of their crimes.”

“We’re deeply relieved that the perpetrators of this despicable crime are lastly going through the results of their selections,” Schultz’s household mentioned in a press release offered to NPR. “This plea deal doesn’t undo the monstrous occasions that led to today, however we’re right here to like and assist Samuel at the moment and without end. We additionally know in a legal authorized system as damaged as ours, victims hardly ever get justice for themselves, and our ideas 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 fully false,” the countertenor mentioned in a press release despatched to NPR in October 2018, after Schultz went public together with his story in an interview with the New York Day by day Information.

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 corporate 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 misplaced his job as a tenured professor of voice on the College of Michigan in 2020.