Patricia Racette is one excited soprano, and she is following in the footsteps of the lady who inspired her to become an opera singer.
As a sophomore at North Texas State University, originally intending to sing jazz and cabaret, Racette was pursuing a vocal performance degree. The curriculum required weekly voice lessons, and her teacher, who felt that her voice was more suited to the classical repertoire, assigned her an operatic selection—“Senza Mamma” from Suor Angelica. “She felt the emotion of the piece would appeal to me, and I wanted to know its context within the opera,” Racette says.
Well, she was sitting in her apartment one day, listening to the CBS recording with Renata Scotto, and everything changed. “I got completely hooked on opera in that one instant. I studied the score and listened to the entire opera before actively learning it and singing it. The story and score immediately appealed to me, and it fit me vocally very well,” she recalls.
When she learned that one soprano could sing all three leading roles in a single performance of Il trittico, Racette was excited about the possibility of doing it herself one day, and she has waited many years to realize that dream. “I’ve been mentioning it to anyone who would listen to me, in terms of wish lists, because it’s long been something I’ve wanted to do,” she says.
Not long ago, she mentioned it to David Gockley, general director of San Francisco Opera, a company for whom Racette has sung a wide variety of roles during the past 20 years. These include Alice Ford in Falstaff, Rosalinda in Die Fledermaus, Freia in Das Rheingold, Mimì in La bohème, Margherita in Mefistofele, Micaëla in Carmen, Antonia in Les contes d’Hoffmann, Violetta in La traviata, Desdemona in Otello, Liù in Turandot, and the title roles of Luisa Miller, Jenûfa and Madama Butterfly.
Gockley listened. “Patricia possesses a versatile voice of considerable color, flexibility, and range. She can sound both youthful and mature, light and dramatic. She is one of a precious few sopranos who can successfully tackle all three leading soprano roles in Il trittico,” he says.
She is also engaged to sing all three roles at the Metropolitan Opera, where she has enjoyed numerous successes since making her debut as Musetta on March 4, 1995. She has appeared with the Met in many of the same roles that she has sung in San Francisco, in addition to Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, Blanche in Dialogues of the Carmelites, Nedda in I pagliacci, Roberta Alden in the world premiere of An American Tragedy and Elisabeth in Don Carlo.
Thus, Racette will become the first soprano in the history of San Francisco Opera to achieve this milestone when she sings Giorgetta, Suor Angelica, and Lauretta in six performances from Sept. 15 to Oct. 3. At the Met, she will be the third soprano in the company’s history to essay the three roles—following Scotto and Teresa Stratas—when their production is revived for seven performances from Nov. 20 to Dec. 12.
Recently, both companies have engaged her as Cio-Cio-San, and their audiences have watched her triumph. In fact, audiences in 36 countries watched her triumph when she sang Cio-Cio-San in the Met’s “Live in HD” movie theater simulcast of Madama Butterfly this past March 7. A few months before the simulcast, the New York Times praised her interpretation of Cio-Cio-San as “exceptional” and drew specific attention to her “dramatic specificity,” including facial expressions and gestures.
Her voice teacher, Trish McCaffrey, says that Cio-Cio-San, which Racette has sung internationally, has played a large part in preparing her for Il trittico.
“The role of Butterfly demonstrates that her voice gets stronger and stronger the longer she sings. In other words, her voice likes to run. She is like a long-distance runner, as opposed to a sprinter, and she is smart about how she uses her voice,” McCaffrey says. Racette knew the timing for Il trittico was right. “Plus, it doesn’t happen that often. There have only been a handful of people who have done this throughout history, so I’m excited and honored to be among that list of names,” she says.
This begs the question: Why is it so rare for a soprano to sing all three roles in one performance?
It is a long evening that requires all mechanisms of the voice—chest voice, head voice, and a combination of both in varying degrees—as McCaffrey explains. “‘Butterfly’ does use all of these mechanisms, but in the opposite order. In ‘Butterfly,’ you need to use a lighter vocal mechanism for the first act, and then the second and third acts use a bigger vocal mechanism. In the way the Met produces Il trittico, the lightest opera for Patricia is Gianni Schicchi, which is the last of the three works. Therefore, she must make certain that her light mechanism is healthy and ready to work for her,” she says.
Racette also points out that a soprano has to use three voices’ ranges, which is not always necessary for one role spread over several acts. “Plus, it’s such an awesome challenge to portray three different people in an evening,” she says. “For me, it’s the theater of the piece that’s as important as the vocalism. These are three complete and separate stories that have nothing to do with one another.”
With that in mind, there are a few specific challenges. One is that she has less time to tell a person’s story and flesh out the character, and that is especially true of Giorgetta and Suor Angelica. Another is that she has to change the visual characteristics, including costumes, wigs and makeup, three times. Each role also requires different body language and a different dramatic range, and these different kinds of physical expression inform her vocal colors and vocal expressions. “All of these elements represent all the theatrical work you’ve done,” she says.
Considering the effort required for one evening, Racette finds that the number of days between performances makes all the difference in maintaining her stamina.
“I rarely have stamina issues. I usually feel fresher toward the end [of a performance], and that’s an attribute of mine that I’m very grateful for. However, I prefer at least two days between performances,” she says.
Even though this is the first time that Racette is tackling all three roles together, it is not the first time that she is singing Suor Angelica. She sang the opera in college, in English. In 1990, she covered it for San Francisco Opera as an Adler Fellow. To prepare for her upcoming performances, she learned the music for the three operas in order, and she has been working on Il trittico for a year with McCaffrey. Il tabarro proved to be the trickiest of the three operas to learn because of the conversational nature of its libretto.
Performing Giorgetta, Suor Angelica, and Lauretta for two opera companies back-to-back is the most recent landmark in a lifetime devoted to music. A native of Manchester, N. H., Racette started playing the guitar at age 8 and, at the same time, discovered her love of singing. She was also active in her high school’s music program.
Following graduation from college and several years of performing with major opera companies, she won two prestigious awards. In 1994, she was the recipient of the Marian Anderson Award, which is presented to an American singer of great promise who has already achieved some success in opera, in recital and in the orchestra/oratorio repertory. Four years later, she won the Richard Tucker Award, presented annually by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation to an American-born opera singer on the threshold of a major national and international career.
In addition to San Francisco Opera and the Met, Racette has sung leading roles with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera (where she will sing her first Tosca in January and February), San Diego Opera (where she will sing her first Manon Lescaut next year), Santa Fe Opera, Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Welsh National Opera, and Paris’ Bastille Opera. Her other roles include Madame Lidoine in Dialogues of the Carmelites, the title role of Kát’a Kabanová, Marguerite in Faust, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Leonora in Il trovatore and Amelia in Simon Boccanegra.
She has also headlined the casts for two other world premieres: Emmeline for Santa Fe Opera and Cold Sassy Tree for Houston Grand Opera. Both have been recorded: She is featured in Santa Fe’s recording of Emmeline, conducted by George Manahan on the Albany Records label, and in HGO’s recording of Cold Sassy Tree, conducted by HGO Music Director Patrick Summers, also on the Albany Records label.
Her other recordings include Ellen Orford in the Met’s Peter Grimes conducted by Donald Runnicles on EMI Classics (another in the “Live in HD” series), Viclinda in the Met’s I lombardi conducted by Met Music Director James Levine on London records, and Zemlinsky’s Der Traumgörge conducted by James Conlon on EMI Classics.
Racette thrives on singing emotional music, and McCaffrey feels that she was born to sing Puccini and modern operas. “She is an emotionally driven singer. The text and storyline are what lead her, and, as we know, Puccini storylines are very emotional and often tragic,” McCaffrey says.
Just as she has sung numerous performances of Puccini’s operas, Racette thinks that any soprano considering singing all three roles in Il trittico should undertake this challenge only after singing plenty of Puccini. “You have to have a comfortable middle and low voice to take this on because of how much lower Tabarro is than, for example, Suor Angelica,” she says.
She continues with more advice inspired by her own commitment to and desire for emotional singing and acting. “You want someone to be a stage animal to do this, someone who really wants the dramatic and theatrical aspects of the evening to be as important as the vocal, which they are for me.”
