Natalie Havens, the opera singer who won the Penn’s Got Talent contest during Penn Medicine Experience Week, feels especially connected to Penn Medicine. Not only does she work as an executive assistant to the senior executives of Good Shepherd Penn Partners at Penn Medicine Rittenhouse, but just five months into her job, her life took a turn and she became a heart surgery patient at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP).
“It’s been a pretty fortuitous and miraculous journey,” said Havens, 31, reflecting on the past year.
Growing up in a family of music lovers and musicians, Havens always loved to sing, but it wasn’t until she was an undergraduate at Florida State University that she discovered opera. She actually started school as a pre-med student and was surprised when the teacher of a choir class that she was taking for fun encouraged her to pursue music seriously.
Havens was accepted into the university’s College of Music, where a teacher sent her home with a CD of his favorite opera singer, Shirley Verrett.
“I listened to it, and I was crying. It was in French and I didn’t know what it meant, but it was so beautiful,” she said.
Havens found that her rich, booming mezzo-soprano voice leant itself well to opera. After graduating with a degree in choral music education, Havens earned a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in voice performance and opera.
In 2019, Havens sang at the Savannah Voice Festival in Georgia and the San Diego Musical Theatre, and lined up two performances for 2020. Then COVID-19 hit, and canceled all performances. At that point, Havens, who had always worked temporary office jobs in between theater gigs, was grateful to land a steady Plan B gig in January working for GSPP Executive Director Jessica Cooper and other GSPP executives.
“Instantly, my boss and I clicked,” Havens said. “She’s an advocate of the arts, and was really supportive of my career.”
That same month, during a routine physical, Havens was surprised to learn she had a heart murmur. Further testing showed mitral valve prolapse, a condition in which the flaps of the heart’s mitral valve bulge into the heart’s left upper chamber. It’s not usually a serious condition, but in Havens’ case, the prolapse was causing blood to leak backward into her heart and her left ventricle was severely enlarged. By February, she knew she needed surgery to repair or replace the valve.
The cardiologist she had met with near her home in New Jersey recommended a surgeon who specialized in mitral valve prolapse: Michael Acker, MD, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Penn Medicine and Director of the Penn Medicine Heart and Vascular Center.
Havens had heard Acker was “the best of the best” for this type of surgery, but it was another detail that sealed the deal. Looking up Acker online, she found the Penn Medicine video, “The Learned Art of Performance in Heart Surgery,” and discovered that in addition to being a renowned heart surgeon, Acker is also a classical guitar player.
“I went, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s one of us,” Havens said.
In the video, Acker, who started playing the guitar at eight years old, reflects on the commonalities between music and medicine.
“Both require incredible dedication and focus and practice, and both, to attain the ultimate heights, you have to add a little bit of yourself, and the creativity portion, the nuance portion, the musicality, or the artistry of surgery,” Acker says.
After Havens watched that video, she felt an immediate connection with Acker. She knew that he would understand her fears of the intubation tube damaging her vocal folds and threatening her ability to sing again. If that happened, she would be devastated.
“I felt like he heard me when I said, ‘I really want to be able to sing.’ I didn’t care if it was just in my kitchen, I just wanted to be able to sing,” Havens said.
On May 6, 2021, Acker was able to completely repair Havens’ mitral valve, which meant she wouldn’t need further surgeries down the road. Only time would tell if her voice would fully recover.
A few months later, Cooper asked if she would like to sing to a dying patient and his husband, who were big opera fans. It was the first time Havens had sung since her surgery. Havens brought along her husband, also an opera singer, and they sang arias from the patient’s favorite opera, Tosca.
“I was singing for somebody who loved what I did, and I was singing because I could, because I was alive,” Havens said. “It was really meaningful.”
By October, after months of postoperative recovery and rehabilitation, Havens was still getting her voice back, but starting to perform concerts again. On Cooper’s encouragement, she entered the virtual Penn’s Got Talent contest as part of Penn Medicine Experience Week. She won the competition with her performance of the aria "En vain pour éviter" from Carmen with Opera Delaware in early 2021.
“Natalie has exceptional talent – a beautiful voice that I wanted her to share with others,” Cooper said. “And the recognition through this competition helped to rebuild her confidence after a major surgery.”
Havens plans to continue pursuing a full-time opera career, but the last year has taught her that she can’t predict what might happen next.
“I feel very supported here in my abilities, and it’s something I’ve never had in my life,” Havens said. “I’m where I need to be right now, and I’m thankful. I’m so grateful to GSPP and the whole Penn system.”