Patricia Racette
For over three decades, Patricia Racette has sung regularly with the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, The Royal Opera Covent Garden, Opéra national de Paris, Teatro Real, San Francisco Opera, and the Santa Fe Opera. She has portrayed iconic heroines from Violetta, Mimi, and Tosca to Madame Butterfly, Jenufa, and all three leading ladies in Puccini’s Il trittico. A champion of new works, she has created leading roles in numerous world premieres, including Picker’s Emmeline and Floyd’s Cold Sassy Tree.
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In 2018, Patricia made her directorial debut with a new production of La traviata for Opera Theatre of St. Louis and has since directed new productions of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah and La Voix Humaine. This season she will direct The Ghosts of Versailles for Rice University, Apprentice Scenes with Orchestra for the Santa Fe Opera, and The Winter Scenes Program for the Lindemann Young Artist Program at the Metropolitan Opera. Other credits include Roméo et Juliette for Arizona Opera, Don Giovanni for the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera, and The Consul for San Francisco Conservatory. She also serves as Artistic Director of Young Artists Programs at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. In the winter of 2025, she returned to San Francisco Conservatory to launch a new course on integrating the art of cabaret with classical singing, expanding on her intensive seminar: Integrative Artistry.
Patricia came full circle to her pre-opera roots in jazz and cabaret in 2013 when her cabaret show, Diva on Detour, with pianist and arranger Craig Terry was captured in front of live studio audiences in New York. Together, they have performed this show at over fifty venues. From the popularity of a Piaf medley on this album, Patricia Sings Piaf was born and had its debut performance at Chicago’s Harris Theater in December 2022. Since then, the show had its West Coast premiere at The Presidio Theater in San Francisco and was just heard at The Sheldon Theater in St. Louis in October 2024.
Her professional identity evolved in San Francisco through the Merola and Adler Programs. She is proud to be a recipient of the Opera News Award, the Richard Tucker Award, the Marian Anderson Award, and a Grammy for Best Opera Recording of Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. A native of New Hampshire, she graduated from the University of North Texas and was later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2017.