Minichan

Breanna Sinclairé is not much of a sports fan but tonight she’s attending her first Oakland A’s game, and, at least at the beginning, all eyes will be on her. Sinclairé, a San Francisco-based opera singer, will ring in the game by singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" in her powerful soprano, becoming the first transgender woman to sing the national anthem at a professional sporting event, according to the singer. “We wanted to promote the theme of inclusion throughout the night, and the anthem is an important part of that,” the team told Out in a statement.

“It’s nerve-wracking,” Sinclairé admits, noting that it is by far the largest crowd she has performed in front of — not even counting the vast TV audience. “But I love what I do and I’ve been trained to do this. It’s a blessing.” The honor is also something of a peak ascent for the 25-year-old, who has traversed a number of dark valleys on her journey to becoming a professional singer.

In Baltimore, where she grew up, Sinclairé’s grandmother introduced her to classical music and the great African-American opera singers like Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman. “She’d play them when she’d babysit,” says Sinclairé. Her first experience singing was with her Baptist church’s choir, where she was handed solo after solo. Despite her physical development as a boy, her voice never really changed, remaining clear and angelically high. With her grandmother’s help, she studied with vocal coaches and enrolled at the Baltimore School of the Arts.

As she embraced her voice, she struggled with her gender identity. It wasn’t until she moved out of Baltimore that she began to embrace that too. “When I left my family, I discovered myself,” she says. At a small conservative Christian college in Canada, Breanna the woman began to emerge but was not embraced by her peers. Unable to continue her journey there, Sinclairé soon left. Disowned by her family, she spent several months homeless in New York City. But music was her North Star, and she followed it to the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, where she earned her B.F.A. and where, in her senior year, she began to transition. The process is arduous for any person, but for Sinclairé, transitioning played particular and unpredictable havoc on her voice. “With hormone therapy, I had to adjust,” she says. “Your body goes through drastic changes. My voice teacher said, ‘you have to plow through it.’ If I didn’t keep practicing, I wouldn’t be able to sing today.”