Giving voice to one of Munster’s greatest singers

Sarah Dolan was raised in her family’s music venue in Limerick, and is intent on reviving the memory of the ‘Hibernian Prima Donna’, writes Cathy Desmond

In a Californian mining town, there is a ‘Katy Hayes Street’, a reminder of the furore Irish woman Catherine Hayes created when she sang for gold rush miners in 1851. Grass Valley, Nevada, was a stop on her American tour sponsored by the ‘greatest showman’ himself, PT Barnum.