Patricia Racette

Patricia Racette (born June 23, 1965, Manchester, New Hampshire) is an American lyric soprano who, in her numerous years with the San Francisco Opera (SFO) and in guest appearances with other leading companies, was noted for her superb acting abilities, vocal power, and nuanced phrasing in virtually every performance of classic operas she assayed. She was also supportive of the work of living composers, creating roles in several world premieres.

Racette grew up in Bedford, New Hampshire. As a teenager, she prepared for a career as a jazz singer, and to that end she attended North Texas State University (later the University of North Texas), which was highly reputed for its jazz-studies program. There she was encouraged to branch out into opera. While still in college at Denton, she sang in her first opera, South Carolina composer Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah (1955), at a small school in Fort Worth, Texas. She revisited that role with the SFO in 2014.

After Racette graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music, she was chosen to participate in the SFO’s Merola Opera Program, designed to help talented young performers develop into consummate professionals. She made her professional opera debut in 1988 in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and she came to be considered a particularly strong interpreter of both Puccini and Leoš Janác̆ek. In 1995 she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera (the Met) in the role of Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème. She subsequently appeared there many times, including three notable performances—in Madama Butterfly, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, and Puccini’s Tosca—for the Met’s Live in HD series. She mastered new works in addition to classics. Among the world premieres in which she participated were Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree (2000); Tobias Picker’s Emmeline (1996), An American Tragedy (2005), and Dolores Claiborne (2012); and Paul Moravec’s The Letter (2009). In 2018 Racette made her directorial debut with a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

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Racette publicly came out as a lesbian in the June 2002 Opera News, the first of four issues to feature her on the cover. She met her wife, mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton, in 1997 when both were singing (Racette as Violetta, Clayton as Flora) in the Santa Fe Opera production of La traviata; the couple married in 2005.

At the start of 2013, Racette returned briefly to her first love, cabaret, with the release of a jazz CD, Diva on Detour. The recording, which she carried off with aplomb, included both standards from the American songbook and songs made famous by French chanteuse Edith Piaf.