Gay & Lesbian Times: Your role as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly is one of the classic tragic roles in opera; does that make it less or more difficult to perform?

Patricia Racette: My characters almost always [have] tragic endings. In the theatrical dramatic sense, that’s very satisfying to play. There’s nothing more annoying than playing a happy person on stage. It’s actually very cathartic. I am very happy in my personal life and I’m really blessed and grateful for that. It’s definitely an opposite situation.

GLT: Your life has defied the tragedy of opera and you’ve found great joy in life on and off stage. Is there a darker side of the opera diva that allows you to draw upon it and bring your life into your roles?

PR: I think any actor draws upon their own experiences and hopefully uses them and infuses it into whatever character they’re playing on stage. I certainly do that and rarely do I ever find an exact situation that replicates my own. It sort of is an emotional memory, or it’s very visceral. You’ve experienced sadness, the sadness can be about my mother’s death, but that can translate. I can understand. I can be in touch with that kind of what I would describe as a primal pain. You can translate that into the kind of primal pain of having to lose your child. Frankly, that’s what I find so cathartic about it. It gets you really thinking about your bad day.

GLT: What is a bad day for you?

PR: Your voice is your instrument. Just like any other part of your body, you feel great some days and sometimes you feel horrible. Your voice is housed in your body. Some days your voice just doesn’t feel very good and that happens to be opening night. A bad day is when you have a big task and you’re not feeling at your best. Things just aren’t going right; make-up just isn’t going right, the wig is different this time, and the audience just doesn’t seem to respond. In terms of a performing bad day, that’s when you think ‘OK I tried.’ Every single time I tried for it to be the very best night and best performance of my life. If you look at it objectively there’s absolutely no way for that to happen every time. But you try. Disappointment is inherent anyway.

GLT: So living the life of an opera songstress isn’t one of glitz and glam?

PR: It can be a very lonely existence. What I mean by that is I’m doing Butterfly. Butterfly is perhaps the most demanding role in the repertoire – certainly in my kind of repertoire it is. I can’t be as social as I might want to be. Right now my colleagues are out by the pool. I can’t use my voice very much. I have to be careful about my energies emotionally, physically and vocally. That can feel very lonely. They all went out last night after the dress rehearsal. I came home and went to bed. Granted I’m tired because my part has been great. It can be lonely. The emotions that one has spanned in an evening of doing something like Butterfly, you pour your heart and soul out there and you go back to the dressing room and take off your stuff and go home. Suddenly you’re back to normal life. That can be a very lonely feeling because you just live such a high, exciting, intense experience, which performing is. That can be what I think is difficult and what makes it particularly challenging for all of us to stay balanced.

GLT: Speaking of balancing, how do you balance being part of a dynamic opera duo with your wife Beth Clayton?

PR: We really have a very special relationship. We’re extremely harmonious. We deal with big difficulties extremely well. That tells a lot about the relationship. We communicate a lot. We talk many times a day. She’s doing her thing too. We get to one another as often as we possibly can. Even when we’re together, sometimes. There’s a certain amount of solitude that I have to have. Emotionally within my head, you end up having a conversation and realize you’re just preoccupied with the work you’re doing. You’re not fully available with the person there. That loneliness in the physical presence of your spouse – that being said there’s nothing like beginning and ending your day with your person. That’s what I really miss. You can’t just be totally available when she’s over for a 10-day visit. We try and are mindful to carve out opera-free time. It’s very important to just make sure we connect as deeply as we are.

GLT: Have you guys ever worked together?

PR: Only a couple times. We met for the first time while doing La Traviata in Santa Fe.

GLT: Is there anything you both would like to do onstage?

There are a couple things she wants to do, but they’re just not my gig. It’s a pants part and they finish just after making love. It would definitely be hot and highly authentic. I might have to concede just once.

GLT: You don’t do trousers?

PR: That’s usually her gig. Our repertoire just doesn’t cross much. I’m really a Puccini girl. Unfortunately, Puccini dissed on the mezzo.

GLT: No Mary Queen of Scots for both of you to battle it out?

PR: No, not in my repertoire.

GLT: Because the roles are so demanding, what do you do for yourself when you’re free?

PR: No pun intended because of the role I’m doing in Butterfly , but I do have to put myself in a cocoon. I can’t do very much. The one thing I save my energy for is I hit the gym five times a week and I have my other studies; I’ve got a lot of music. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for other things. I have tons of things I would like to do if I were in one place. Just like any well-grown lesbian, I want to be a part of a softball team – that’s not possible. I’m never in any one place long enough. I’d love to have a vegetable garden. I love to cook. The idea of going out to my garden and getting my own ingredients is thrilling. These are things I wish and hope for when I’m retired.

GLT: You seem so laid back, is there an diva inside you? Isn’t there a story about hurling a wig in your background?

PR: Is it the one from La Traviata from ’98 at the Met? It was hideous! I love Franco, but he came and he wanted the look when I say Holly Hunter in The Piano. It was the most hideous time period for hair. That sort of really parted in the middle flat flat flat. It was just disgusting and horrible looking. It was my job to look like the most desirable woman in the room. I felt like a toad. When he put it on my I head, I threw it across the room. The only thing I’m really demanding of and insistent upon is that I’m a part of the equation, that there’s a collaboration. I refuse to be treated as a subordinate to the conductor or director. I am a participant. I know my job.