Full-length Mozart operas were missing from the Met last season when the company made due with its popular, if butchered, English-language Magic Flute. Happily, this season will host impressively cast revivals of Le Nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte, but they don’t arrive until March. To the relief of many, the Met’s much much-disliked Coney Island Così is eventually due to be replaced by a production directed by Robert Carsen.

Goerke and Gunn, today’s Fiordiligi and Guglielmo, made their Met debuts on the same night in 1995, in the first (and so far only) revival of The Ghosts of Versailles. Two years later, they were together again for that summer’s most buzzed-about production, Francesca Zambello’s Iphigénie en Tauride at the Glimmerglass Festival. She was acclaimed for her commanding take on Gluck’s heroine while fetching photos of the strapping half-dressed Gunn (often clasping a similarly alluring William Burden) helped start the rage for operatic barihunks. Zambello’s production came to New York City Opera later than year with Goerke but shorn of its Gunn.

By 2001, Croft had already been at the Met for a decade though rarely in first casts other than appearing as Cassio in the premiere of Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Otello. Meanwhile throughout Europe he was being acclaimed for his portrayals of 18^th century heroes, some of which were recorded. His breakthrough at the Met finally came in 2008 when he starred as a haunting Gandhi in the company’s premiere of Glass’s Satyagraha.

Of the four, DiDonato would have the toughest time slowly emerging after years of hard work as one of the world’s most sought-after mezzo sopranos. After her Met debut in 2005 as Cherubino, her star power was immediately recognized and she was tapped several weeks later to replace a fired singer as Stéphano in the new production premiere of Roméo et Juliette (the one Natalie Dessay canceled). Many important new productions and recordings have followed, and this summer she completed her worldwide, multi-year Eden tour with Il Pomo d’Oro in Warsaw–its 50^th show!

Mozart : Così fan Tutte

Fiordiligi: Christine Goerke
Dorabella: Joyce DiDonato
Despina: Judith Christin
Ferrando: Richard Croft
Guglielmo: Nathan Gunn
Don Alfonso: Alfonso Antoniozzi

Conductor: Patrick Summers
Houston Grand Opera
19 January 2001
Broadcast

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