B-Side the Leeside: Cara O'Sullivan and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra - Cara Diva
Cara O'Sullivan at the Marina, Cork, around the launch of her Cara Diva album in aid of Marymount Hospice. Picture: Dan Linehan
In 2002, Cork soprano Cara O’Sullivan released Cara Diva, a 17-track CD of popular arias with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, recorded as a fundraiser for Marymount Hospice.
The original CD contained a typically cheery and warm sleeve note written by the singer, with the strangely prescient line that she had been motivated to record the album for Marymount Hospice by a cancer scare that made her realise that “You, or I, or our loved ones, may someday need the special care provided by Marymount.”
Eighteen years later, in January of this year, O’Sullivan, hailed as one of Ireland’s greatest operatic singers, herself passed away in Marymount Hospice, at just 58 years old, having been diagnosed with early onset dementia in 2018.
“It was very fitting, that she got to go back there for a few days at the end,” her daughter Christine says. “I can’t remember the final figure, but in excess of €350,000 was raised by her album. It was a lot of money, and a lot of people out selling the CDs. The result was that the money went to build the new hospice building in Curraheen, and so she sang at the opening of that as well. It was great to be able to contribute to something like that, something that so many people would benefit from.”
True to the coloratura soprano’s grounded style which saw her remain a much-beloved local Cork fixture at charity events and concerts even as she toured the stages of the world with large opera productions, tracks chosen for Cara Diva never strayed too far into the rarified, retaining a popular touch by combining classical opera arias from Puccini, Delibes and Rossini with popular hits like I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls and We’ll Gather Lilacs.
Having been a firm favourite on Irish and international stages since the 1990s, O’Sullivan was recording what was essentially her debut album at 40, so even though it was a charity release, she treated the process, Christine recalls, with her characteristic drive and dedication.
“She worked so hard and she took her work so seriously,” Christine says. “A huge amount of preparation went in learning and practicing. It was. huge milestone for her too, to record a CD with a full orchestra. She always wanted to record a very high-quality album and she didn’t record another until 2016.”
Christine was in her teens, anything but an opera fan, the summer that her mother was recording Cara Diva. She remembers the work she put into the album, the many return visits to Dublin to record. But she also remembers that O’Sullivan had downplayed one important factor in her decision to make a charity album in her sleeve notes: the year Cara Diva was being recorded, her mother Ann was dying of cancer, and was cared for at Marymount.
Ann was sick throughout the recording of the album, and passed away before its launch.
“I remember when the actual CD arrived, when we got the master CD in the door, granny was gone at that stage and I know that was really difficult for her, because the first thing she wanted to do was go to the phone to ring her mum and tell her,” Christine says.
Whatever the turmoil her mother’s illness was causing in her personal life, O’Sullivan was as ever the consummate professional during the recording of Cara Diva, RTÉ Concert Orchestra Principal Conductor of 25 years Proinnsias Ó Dúinn recalls.
“I think she made reference to her mother in passing, but she never leaned on any kind of ‘poor me’ attitude,” Ó Dúinn says. “She would mention something, and then move on to the positive things and the laughs came within minutes. She didn’t labour anyone with any problems she might have had, and she wasn’t ever looking for sympathy.”
Cara Diva was recorded in RTÉ’s Studio One with full orchestra, and the recordings were completed in a matter of days: because it was a charity album for independent release, costs were kept low and an important consideration, Ó Dúinn says, was ensuring the tracks selected were copyright-free.
“The main work was in deciding what could go on it that wouldn’t cost money every time it got played,” the conductor says.
“We used orchestrations available from the RTÉ libraries, and then we had to think about things like what key the things she wanted from the libraries were in. There was some arranging to do and she had to restrict her choices a bit, and we had to restrict what we were doing too: the process of selection, I recall, took a lot longer than the actual recording itself.”
Ó Dúinn had worked with O’Sullivan over the course of many years before Cara Diva was recorded: since O’Sullivan won RTÉ’s Young Musician of the Future award at 28 in 1990, she had worked with the national broadcaster frequently.
The Young Musician award marked a turning point for O’Sullivan. Prior to this, the singer had put her career on hold in her early twenties with the arrival of Christine: as a young single mother, her parents had been instrumental in supporting her to return to her promising career.
For Ó Dúinn, recording Cara Diva was a relatively simple undertaking due to O’Sullivan’s discipline and preparedness.
“We knew Cara very well and she was always so pleasant; a trouble-free soprano,” he says. “She would always walk into the studio knowing her stuff, so the colleagues in the orchestra always enjoyed her being there.
“All I had to do as a conductor was go through it once with her, to find out how she wanted it, and then I’d rehearse the orchestra in that manner, and then we’d record. The sound engineer was working all the time and off we’d go. We may have done two takes on a few of them, but generally, it was one take. That’s how she was.”
In the early 2000s, RTÉ’s Studio One was “not used to doing commercial recordings: the lights caused a hum, which you had to watch,” Ó Dúinn says. “The sound engineers did their best, and it was the biggest and best studio we had. Going back and editing could be more difficult in those days then going for a second take, but none of them were very long pieces, so we often just went for a second take if necessary.”
As conductor, he says, his role is to ensure the soloist is happy. And it was a source of satisfaction to him that O’Sullivan was so happy with the resulting recording. As a snapshot of the singer’s versatility and expressive range, he feels, the Cara Diva album will stand the test of time and serve as a record of the talent that was Cara O’Sullivan.
“To know people can still enjoy it and hear it is rewarding,” he says.
For her daughter Christine, it was “far too difficult” to listen to her mother’s recordings throughout her illness and death. Recently, however, she found herself listening to the Vissi D’Arte, the famed Puccini aria, sung by O’Sullivan with profound emotion on Cara Diva.
“I just think the words, when you hear them in translation, are amazing,” Christine says. “And she just always sang it so well.”
