The mostly-lyrical-soprano Patricia Racette is getting ready for her Richard Strauss debut, says Martin Bernheimer in Ravinia Magazine:
Patricia Racette is excited. That, she admits, is not an unusual state for her. Other sopranos spend much of their careers trying to produce and project pearly tones. They often tend to be reserved, if not placid, in interview situations, too. Racette, who takes on the archetypal agonies and some might say perverted ecstasies of Richard Strauss' Salome at Ravinia this summer, isn't much like her standard-brand colleagues.
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Given the soprano's communicative proclivities, Racette and Salome should be compatible entities. James Conlon, mastermind and chief conductor at Ravinia, obviously thinks so. It was he who persuaded Racette to undertake her first Salome as the festival celebrates Strauss' 150th anniversary. And, crucially, it is he who mans the podium for the occasion.Most singers undertaking Strauss' operatic marathon are heavyweights (the term refers to vocal, not necessarily physical attributes). These singers command a huge sound and endless quasi-Wagnerian stamina. It is no coincidence that many a historic Salome has also been an admired Brünnhilde. Think Birgit Nilsson for starters. If Racette has a role model, however, it is a smaller-scale interpreter: Teresa Stratas. "I know she did it only for a video, never on the stage, but for me she was ideal — so young, so fragile, so magnetic ..."
Racette's soprano, though big and strong, wide-ranging and plangent, is essentially lyrical in timbre. At most she might be regarded as a vocal middleweight, a.k.a spinto. An Italianate stranger in a Germanic paradise, she comes to Strauss with considerable experience in Verdi, Puccini and, most recently at the Met, Giordano (Maddalena in Andrea Chénier). Next season she adds Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. Not long ago she undertook Julie in Jerome Kern's Show Boat, a stylistic excursion that, as far as we can recall, no other Salome has ventured.