He switched to vocal performance while in college, and won the Metropolitan Opera Competition in his final year of study.
[2] He appeared at the Metropolitan from 1979 to 1989 in Ariadne auf Naxos (with Johanna Meier and René Kollo), Die Zauberflöte (opposite Rita Shane, then Zdzisława Donat, as the Queen of Night), Pagliacci (as Silvio, with Carlo Bergonzi and Cornell MacNeil), Don Pasquale (directed by John Dexter), Il barbiere di Siviglia, Pelléas et Mélisande (a performance later released on Compact Discs), Peter Grimes (as Ned Keene, opposite Jon Vickers), Billy Budd (with Richard Cassilly, in Dexter's production), and Die Fledermaus (as Dr Falke).
The baritone has also sung under the direction of Karl Böhm, Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Carlo Maria Giulini, Edo de Waart, Herbert von Karajan, and Seiji Ozawa.
In 1993, Duesing received a Grammy Award for his 1991 recording of Samuel Barber's The Lovers with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was named the Singer of the Year by Opernwelt magazine in 1994.
[3] Other of his recordings include Così fan tutte (conducted by Bernard Haitink, 1986), Hans Zender's Stephen Climax (with Ronald Hamilton as St Simeon Stylites, 1990), and La vie avec un idiot (conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, 1992).