Cara O'Sullivan: Her greatest performances and the qualities that made her so special 

Six friends and music experts reflect on the late great Cork woman, a singer whose incredible vocal abilities were matched by an indomitable spirit
Cara O'Sullivan: Her greatest performances and the qualities that made her so special 

Cara O'Sullivan performing at City Hall Cork. Picture: Maurice O'Mahony

Declan Townsend, music teacher and former classical/opera writer for the Irish Examiner

 “Cara’s parents, Donal and Anne, were family friends. I was the head of the Singing Department in the Cork School of Music and the O’Sullivans really were the backbone of St Francis Choir. So Cara was a part of my life, a regular visitor to my home. They used to come to our holiday home in West Cork.

“I have a very vivid memory of Cara sitting on our sofa accompanying herself on the guitar and singing Mellow the Moonlight. She was a teenager, maybe 17.

“For her 21st birthday, I gave her a beautiful bound edition of the opera Norma. Twenty-five years later, she performed it in the National Concert Hall, and my God, it was magnificent.

“She could hold an audience in the palm of her hand. She was able to draw a pure, pure line of music out of herself and a lot of that was to do with her breath control and the unique bond she’d had with her singing teacher, Bob Beare. She was very precious, and not only that, she was generous.” 

Gerry Kelly, Cork School of Music, Cork Pops Orchestra

 “It’s her energy that will live on forever. That’s what inspired us musicians she worked with so much; you have to match up to a performer like that. You find yourself reaching beyond what you think is your limit. It’s like running a race alongside an Olympic athlete.

“She engaged with everyone. She didn’t care whether you were the cellist in the orchestra or whatever. She was a great human being like that, and a right good laugh too. Professional musicians loved her.

“It’s not easy to pick out a favourite recording, because everything she sang got the full nine yards. There’s a beautiful Mio Babbino, and a wonderful Vissi D’arte. But I think the record she made for Marymount Hospice with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra will be played and played; it’s a great album and it’s fitting that it was for charity, because she did so much charity work, without ever coming across as a goody-two-shoes.”

From left, Mary Hegarty, David Brophy, Gerry Kelly, Cathy Desmond, John O'Brien and Declan Townsend.
From left, Mary Hegarty, David Brophy, Gerry Kelly, Cathy Desmond, John O'Brien and Declan Townsend.

Mary Hegarty, opera singer

 “We both started in the School of Music in the late 1970s, and we were both in the same choir. We were mates, but then I moved to England. She came to Garsington Opera to do Il Seraglio in 1999. She was in the role of Konstanze and I was her maid, Blonde. We had such fun, with her pretending to boss me about.

“Majella Cullagh and I led the fundraising concerts for Cara in Cork Opera House in 2019, but really Cara’s own last performance was at the Lord Mayor’s Concert a year earlier. It was clear even then that her illness was taking its toll and it was heart-breaking to see this incredible performer struggling.

“She really was a one-off: the combination of her professionalism and her enormous sense of fun. It’s hard to believe that she’s gone.”

 David Brophy, conductor, RTÉ Concert Orchestra

 “She wasn’t a diva; she was a great mucker-in. We did a series of concerts for the NSO called They Don’t Sing Them Like They Used To. She’d be given songs for mezzos or altos, things that weren’t in the right key for her, but she’d just find a way to make them work. She was highly creative, and the orchestra loved her.

“We did her final concert in June 2018, and it was clear that she wasn’t well, wasn’t herself. When she did O Mio Babbino Caro, some of the players were in tears in front of me. I think we could all sense that this was the last time.

“It’s surreal for her to be gone. I found myself thinking back over all the performances we did together down through the years and they all came back to me. In a weird way, musicians never really die.” 

David Brophy and Cara O'Sullivan in 2018 at one of  her final performances. 
David Brophy and Cara O'Sullivan in 2018 at one of  her final performances. 

 John O'Brien, conductor and composer 

"She was capable of bringing high artistry to everything, without snobbery. I sang as a boy, so we actually performed together at a Potato Festival in Youghal in around 1992. Years later when I started working with her as a conductor, we used to laugh about that.

“I was conducting UCC Choral Society when I was still doing my degree, and we did a concert in the Opera House. It was terrifying and brilliant and the whole thing seemed to revolve around her beautiful, extraordinary energy.

“When we did Dido and Aeneas, we were reconceiving how to make opera. There was no conductor, no safety net for a singer, but she was really up for it.

“I want her to be remembered for a combination of the phenomenal voice she was blessed with, this shimmering, bright voice that got richer and warmer as she got older, and her instinctive control and instinctive good taste when it came to things like phrasing. And for how much fun she was. She loved a bit of chaos, a bit of chat with the audience.”

Cathy Desmond, Irish Examiner classical/opera writer 

 “Cara O’Sullivan was a fearless performer with a glorious voice who imbued her song recitals with the spirit of a hooley in the kitchen. The ability to reach out and engage an audience endeared her to a wider audience beyond the cloistered world of classical music. 

"I saw her in 2015 stun an audience at the National Concert Hall, Dublin with a nuanced performance of intricate Baroque and Romantic repertoire and send us home laughing with a hilarious encore when she presented the pianist with a cactus.

"Her superb vocal skills and theatrical instincts were best demonstrated on the opera stage. Among her many performances that I enjoyed, Cara O’Sullivan was a regal Queen of Carthage in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and a fine Marguerite in Faust.

"The role I remember best was in a 2012 production during Cork Midsummer Fest. O’Sullivan’s dramatic flair and rich velvety voice brought out the dark complexity of the character of Nedda in Cork Operatic Society’s production of Leoncavello’s Pagliacci at the Everyman.”

  • Cara O'Sullivan, 1962-2021 

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