Opera singer David Daniels permanently barred from union after pleading guilty to sexual assault
David Daniels, the once-prominent opera singer who pleaded guilty to sexual assault earlier this year, has been permanently banned from the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), a spokesperson for the organization confirmed Wednesday.
Daniels — who was also fired from his job as a voice professor at the University of Michigan in early 2020 — was officially informed he was barred from the guild in a letter sent late last month.
In the letter, released by the union this week, the AGMA’s disciplinary panel “strongly” condemned Daniels’ actions, “specifically with regards to what appears to be a pattern of soliciting students for sex and offering them money, or both, in exchange for promised career advancement.”
His behavior was “antithetical to [his] responsibilities as both an AGMA member and as a member of a broader community of performing artists,” the panel wrote.
In August of this year, the famed countertenor and his husband, conductor Scott Walters, pleaded guilty to a pair of sexual assault charges related to the rape of an aspiring singer and fan more than a decade ago.
The victim, 37-year-old Sam Schultz, went public with the accusations against the then-power couple in an exclusive interview with the Daily News in August 2018.
Schultz, a New York-based baritone, said he was drugged and raped by the two men following a performance of Handel’s “Xerxes” at the Houston Grand Opera in May 2010.
Daniels and Walters, who were married in 2014 by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were charged with sexual assault in 2019.
For years they denied the allegations, saying their encounter with Schultz had been consensual. But on Aug. 4, 2023, the couple stunned the classical music world after pleading guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony.
The deal meant the two men avoided a more serious charge of aggravated sexual assault, which would carry lengthy jail sentences. They were instead sentenced to eight years’ probation and were required to register as sex offenders.
With News Wire Services
