Two-diva household: soprano Patricia Racette talks about coming out along with her partner, mezzo Beth Clayton. (Music).

For the operatic heroines that Patricia Racette portrays onstage, love is always a tenor-soprano affair. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and by the time the curtain falls, both boy and girl usually meet their unhappy ends. When Racette and her partner of five years, mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton, decided to come out publicly in June, they put a new twist on the old opera cliches.

"We've always been out personally, in our work; we just never said it in print," says the 37-year-old soprano, referring to the June issue of Opera News, where she discussed her relationship with the 33-year-old Clayton for the first time. "Beth and I talked it over and decided that this was the time to go ahead and speak the truth because it's something we're very proud of."

"We've been approached [to come out] for several years now, especially Patricia, because she's further along in her career than I am," Clayton adds. "We wanted to wait until a time where I was really hitting my own stride professionally because we really like to be associated separately. If it had been up to just us, we would gladly have been interviewed probably three days after we had gotten together."

The couple met in New Mexico during a 1997 Santa Fe Opera production of La Traviata, in which Racette played Violetta and Clayton portrayed Flora Bervoix. "We had the same manager for a couple years and he said, `Oh, you two would really make great friends; you should meet one another,'" Racette says, then laughs. "He didn't realize how well we'd get along. The chemistry between us was huge--it was so intense. When we were going through rehearsals [for Traviata], it was like the rest of the world ceased to exist."

There are only a handful of openly gay opera singers (most famously, countertenor David Daniels), and Racette and Clayton's relationship marks something even more rare: They are the first out gay or lesbian opera couple. "It really does feel great to be the first," Racette says. "But I'll be very honest, I had about an hour of a panic attack about it. I was like, Oh, my God, what have I done? My business is incredibly competitive. My repertoire is phenomenally competitive. I do leading-lady kinds of parts, and I'm either hooking up with a tenor or baritone. Even though I think it's ludicrous that someone wouldn't find me believable in a role because I'm gay, I was worried. I wondered, Is my work going to dry up?"

But there's no sign that either Racette's or Clayton's engagements will evaporate anytime soon. In September, Clayton will sing Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis's Garden of Light symphony with the Minnesota Orchestra. In December, Racette will sing the leading role in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites at New York City's Metropolitan Opera. Next year at the Santa Fe Opera, she's set to tackle Janacek's Kat'a Kabanova for the first time, and in 2004 at the Houston Grand Opera she will sing her first Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly.

Racette was raised in a working-class family in New Hampshire, while Clayton hails from Arkansas. Since their modest small-town beginnings, both women have forged successful international careers, singing at some of the most prestigious opera houses in the United States and Europe. Along the way, the two have also encountered the uglier side of the music business. "We've encountered homophobia in the form of absolute dismissal," Racette says. "People have said, `Well, you're attractive enough; why are you with a woman?' People may look to see if I really `mean it' onstage, but my response to them is that I never did before, so nothing has changed. I'm an actor. I don't have to be what I'm playing in order to do it effectively."

The toughest challenge for Clayton and Racette, however, isn't the ignorance of some of their peers but the fact that they're both singers with thriving careers. "Every successful opera singer has to be to some extent a diva, and the rate of success in two-diva households is not good," says James Jorden, editor of the queer opera E-zine Parterre Box, alluding to the problems that competing egos can wreak on a relationship.

"I'd be lying if I said that wasn't our greatest challenge as a couple, but I feel that we meet it beautifully," says Racette. "We're in such harmony with one another--musical pun not intended--our bond is more important to us than our careers."

Dukowitz has written for Salon.com.