Soprano Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet is a regularly featured star with many of the nation's leading opera companies, including San Francisco Opera, Dallas Opera, New Orleans Opera, New York City Opera and many others.

She recently made her debut with the Opera de Paris as Medea in Rolf Liebermann's new opera by that name. She has performed some of the most demanding soprano roles to great critical acclaim in opera houses throughout the United States and Europe, including Senta in The Flying Dutchman, Sieglinde in Die Walküre, Amelia in Un ballo in maschera and the title role in Turandot.

The singer is accompanied by her partner, Bobbie Falls, and their 19-month-old son. In just a year since the boy's birth, Ms. Charbonnet says, the family has traveled to New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Palm Beach, San Diego, Austria in the summer, New Orleans again, then back to Dallas. The rest of the time, the family lives in New York.

"I don't think it's such a novelty," says Charbonnet of her status as a openly lesbian opera singer. "There are actually many lesbian opera singers, and more and more of us are out of the closet. There always have been."