O’Sullivan to sing childhood songs of past

On Sunday night, operatic star Cara O’Sullivan graces the stage of Cork Opera House in what has been promised as a unique solo performance.

Well known on the international operatic circuit, O’Sullivan chooses to live in her native Cork, the place she loves best. “It’s almost inevitable for an Irish singer to have to go abroad to build up a career. You pack your suitcase, you travel and you sing, and then repeat the whole procedure over and over,” she explains.

O’Sullivan decided to see if she could stay at home and still continue her career. “So far it’s worked, although I still have to travel a lot, of course.”

Her Opera House concert will be very different to the usual high performance recital one might expect from a famed operatic singer. Together with accompanist Ciara Moroney she will be reviving some of those old sweet songs that bring back memories of childhood to us all.

O’Sullivan explains how it came about. “The families of Rita Lynch and Hancy Gileece gifted me their music books, and I found such wonderful songs like ‘The Old Refrain’, ‘Home Sweet Home’, ‘Count Your Blessings’. I recall so vividly my parents and their friends singing them. They would visit each other and have musical evenings, or just sing around the piano at home. It was very emotional to see and hum over these songs, read the words for the first time. It brought back so many memories of lovely times in childhood.”

You can’t manufacture those memories of long ago, she explains. To get such a treasure trove into her hands was, says O’Sullivan, “like the Holy Grail”. “All the marks and notations they made on their copies are still there. It’s touching a time I thought had gone forever.”

She is certain the experience will be the same for her audience in the upcoming concert. “You may not remember that they were once familiar, when you were very small, but when you hear the tune, all those memories will come flooding back.”

To demonstrate, she breaks into song. “When eyes of blue come smiling through…” and then laughs delightedly. “I read the first few bars of that and realised I knew it already! I hadn’t realised or remembered, but it was still there.”

O’Sullivan is confident that this concert will be a new experience for her audience. “It’s still me singing, but this time I’m not pretending to be an operatic figure, reflecting different emotions. I’m being totally myself, and bringing back songs they will recognise. With TV and music these days, you don’t hear people singing as much as they did when I was young, which is a pity. This show is a step back into that musical past.”

A new idea for a future concert is being developed with close friend and contralto, Cora Newman.

“Collaborating is exciting — it creates. As soloists we’re always alone, practising, rehearsing, and then performing, so making music together is wonderful,” says O’Sullivan.

She and Newman are looking at some of the great old duets with plans to develop a show. And next February she will be singing the key role of Marguerite in the new production of Gounod’s Faust at Everyman Cork, directed by John O’Brien.

For the moment she’s concentrating on Sunday and songs like ‘The Fairy Tree’. “I searched for years for the original music for that. It’s quite a complex accompaniment. And then, one day, I was leafing through a bundle of sheet music and suddenly it was there. At last!”

- Cara O’Sullivan, Cork Opera House, Sunday. www.corkoperahouse.ie  .