The complaint for sexual assault filed by the French soprano Chloé Briot against a fellow singer, who had carried the #MeToo movement in the field of music in 2020, has been dismissed, the Besançon prosecutor announced on Tuesday.
The mirror complaint filed by the respondent for “slanderous denunciations” against the singer was also dismissed, said the prosecutor, Etienne Manteaux, competent because the baritone is domiciled in his jurisdiction of the Besançon prosecutor’s office.
The baritone should “interpret love scenes for the sake of hyper realism, under the permanent control of the director, with a partner who at no time told him of her discomfort in the interpretation of these two scenes of sexual intercourse “notes the magistrate.
Gold, “it was not demonstrated during the investigation that Mr. was aware that his acting had gradually generated such painful feelings in his partner”he explained, pointing out the absence of a “guilty intent on the part of the defendant”.
Soprano Chloé Briot, 34, filed a complaint in 2020 for repeated sexual assaults by a fellow singer. The facts denounced took place on stage, still in the presence of witnesses, in 2018 during the opera The carrot kingin Lille, then in 2020 at the Rennes and Nantes opera houses, during the show Floodingby Joel Pommerat.
The Ministry of Culture had made a report to the public prosecutor in the extension of this complaint and the branch of the PJ of Besançon, the PJ of Rennes and the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP ) had been seized of the preliminary investigation.
The singer had publicized the case in an interview with The Musician’s Letterclaiming that his partner “always acted beyond the framework of the director’s proposals”.
During the investigation, on the contrary, she acknowledged that the director had not given them a clear scenography on the scenes of simulations of sexual intercourse, according to the prosecutor.
As soon as she had informed Joël Pommerat of her feelings about the baritone playing, the director had “cropped” this one, who had immediately stopped grabbing her buttocks during the sex scenes, by “becoming aware of his partner’s discomfort”note Stephen Coats.
The magistrate held that “radical change” of the singer in his interpretation based on the evolution of the director’s instructions “is a pledge of its good faith”.
This procedure “leaves the impression of a great waste given the suffering felt by Madame Briot”who received three days of temporary absence from work for post-traumatic symptoms, and “the misunderstanding of the gentleman, who saw his 20-year stage career compromised following this affair”notes the prosecutor.
The singer has since converted to become a nursing assistant in an Ehpad.