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He has frequently showed his versatility by singing two roles from the same opera: Figaro and the Count in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Leporello and the title role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Guglielmo and Don Alfonso in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and Dandini and Don Magnifico in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, among others.
During his years on the roster, Foldi appeared as Schigolch in the company premieres of Alban Berg's Lulu (directed by John Dexter, 1977, which was published on DVD in 2010) and Dansker in Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd (1978) as well as playing Dr. Bartolo in the premiere of Günther Rennert's Met staging of Le Nozze di Figaro (1975).
Although Mozart would always remain at the core of her repertoire (Susanna, Zerlina), she gradually included roles such as Rosina, Annchen, Véronique, as well as many roles in opera by Monteverdi, Rameau, and Haydn.
The first movement (Entrée) is bipartite and juxtaposes several musical ideas: a theme inspired by Susanna's aria Venite inginocchiatevi in Act 2 of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, birdsong transcriptions (Garden Warbler as well as birds of New Zealand like the Blue-Wattled Crow, the Bush Canary and the Kakapo), a call and response of short melodic cells, a section for wind machine, strings and cymbal and two conclusive chords.
She gained international recognition in 1995 with her debut at the Salzburg Festival, where she sang the role of Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and staged by Luc Bondy.
She took part in several projects with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, such as a production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro staged by Jürgen Flimm in Amsterdam.
European engagements include Brag in Purcell's The Fairy-Queen at the Gran Teatro del Liceu Barcelona; Somnos (Semele) and Bartolo (Le nozze di Figaro) with De Vlaamse Opera; and Xuthus in Pam Vir's Ion for the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg.
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British engagements also include Bartolo in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro for Opera North and Garsington Opera; Collatinus in Britten's Rape of Lucretia at Buxton Festival; and Sacristan (Tosca), Bosun (Billy Budd), Benedict (La Vie Parisienne) and Masetto (Don Giovanni) for Scottish Opera.
She made her formal Metropolitan Opera debut on November 28, 1973, as Nicklausse in Les contes d'Hoffmann (with Plácido Domingo in the name part), and later sang Dorabella in Così fan tutte (1975–76), Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro (opposite Justino Díaz and Judith Blegen, 1976) and Parséïs in Esclarmonde (opposite Sutherland, 1976).
In 1924, at the invitation of maestro Arturo Toscanini, she made her debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, as Sieglinde in Walkure, and went on singing there as Alice Ford in Falstaff, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro, and created the role of Dolly at the world premiere of Wolf-Ferrari's opera Sly in 1927, with the great Italian tenor Aureliano Pertile.
The replacement of numbers with more continuous music began in operas by Jommelli, Traetta, Gluck, and especially Mozart, whose late operas Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni contain several segments in which different numbers are unified by bridge passages to form a musical whole.
She participated in several television productions for RAI such as Le nozze di Figaro, La Traviata, Otello, and Falstaff.
Other early operatic appearances were Zerlina in Don Giovanni with Scottish Opera, and both Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier for English National Opera.
A frequent collaborator with the director Peter Sellars, he appeared in Sellars' re-imaginings of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte and Le nozze di Figaro, aforementioned operas of John Adams and, in 2009, Adams's A Flowering Tree presented at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival.
Her roles at the Met included Juliette, Marguerite, Marguerite de Valois from Les Huguenots, Micaela from Carmen, Cherubino from Le nozze di Figaro, Donna Elvira from Don Giovanni, Philine from Mignon, Berthe from Le prophète, the Forest Bird from Siegfried, Nedda from Pagliacci, Gilda from Rigoletto, Infanta from Le Cid, Inès from L'Africaine, and Mimì from La bohème among others.
With that maestro, she recorded Le nozze di Figaro (1978), Lohengrin (opposite René Kollo and Dunja Vejzovic, 1976-81) and Der Rosenkavalier (with Agnes Baltsa and Janet Perry, 1982).
At the end of 2006, when De Nederlandse Opera staged the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, de Niese sang Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro and Despina in Così fan tutte.
He began his career with the New Orleans Opera Association in secondary parts, including appearances in Salome (1949), Le nozze di Figaro (1956), Il trovatore (opposite Herva Nelli, 1958) and The Beggar's Opera (directed by Lillian Gish, 1958).
Additional operatic successes include Le Nozze di Figaro (Cherubino) and Carmen (Mercedes) with the Vancouver Opera, Fenena in Nabucco with Manitoba Opera, Albert Herring (Nancy) with the Calgary Opera and many appearances with the Edmonton Opera.
MacWatters sang at the New York City Opera from 1946 to 1951, in The Pirates of Penzance (as Mabel, conducted by Julius Rudel), Rigoletto (as Gilda, with Giuseppe Valdengo and Luigi Infantino), Il barbiere di Siviglia (as Rosina, opposite Enzo Mascherini), The Old Maid and the Thief (as Laetitia, with Marie Powers), Le nozze di Figaro (as Susanna), Les contes d'Hoffmann (as Olympia), and Ariadne auf Naxos (as Zerbinetta).