A singing career in opera burnt her out, but compassion fueled a new passion

Kerriann Otaño found opera at 14, when a former opera singer heard her sing and decided to take her under her wing. That decision eventually turned into a 15-year career for Otaño singing professionally for a variety of opera houses. Eventually, though, Otaño found herself getting burned out.

“I was really isolated,” said Otaño. “As a freelancer, you bounce from city to city. You really don’t have connection to the community that you’re living in, and you’re performing at a really, really high level. If you can’t sing the high C that you need to sing that night, if you have to call out, you don’t get paid. That led to a really dark period where I couldn’t sing without crying.”

Otaño said the anxiety got worse and worse, to the point where she confessed the difficulty she was having to the general director at the opera house she was meant to start at next. But, instead of being fired as she had feared, she found support.

“The general director of the company at the time asked, ‘If you leave here, do you have health insurance?’ And I said no. And he said, ‘Well then, we’re not going to have you leave in a crisis,'” Otaño recalled. “This is unheard of in opera. I didn’t know that we could take care of each other like this.”

Listen to the media player above to learn how that response changed Otaño’s career path.