Acclaimed Italian bass - baritone Alfonso Antoniozzi also makes his HGO debut as the crafty Don Alfonso. Rounding out the cast, American mezzo-soprano Judith Christin returns to Houston in the hilarious role for the girls' scheming maid Despina. HGO Studio artists soprano Jessica Jones, mezzo-soprano Marie Lenormand, baritone Shannon De Vine, and former Studio tenor Chad Shelton as the couples. Studio bass Oren Gradus sings Don Alfonso and soprano Kerri Marcinko portrays Despina. Head of Music Staff Richard Bado conducts the alternate cast performance and prepared the HGO Chorus for all performances.
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Testing the faithfulness of their girlfriends in order to win a bet, two young men learn that they are not as indispensable to their fiancees as they thought. The twists and turns of the plot lead to many comic situations, but Mozart's sublime music keeps the opera from dissolving into mere farce. On the operatic stage, Ms Goerke debuts this season at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires as Dona Elvira in Don Giovanni in addition to her HGO debut. The 1999 - 2000 season found her at Paris Opera as Alice Ford in a new production of Falstaff and at Metropolitan Opera for Gotterdammerung with James Levine. Ms. Goerke has appeared on the concert platform as a soloist with many of the nation's greatest orchestras including the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and Atlanta Symphony.