Majella Cullagh on playing Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music

The Cork soprano tells Colette Sheridan about her role in the Cork Opera House production, and of memories of her late friend Cara O'Sullivan

Majella Cullagh and other cast members of The Sound of Music, at Cork Opera House. Picture: Miki Barlok

Sun, 19 Jul, 2026 - 21:00

Colette Sheridan

For the first time in her career, Majella Cullagh, one of Ireland’s foremost opera singers, is starring in a musical. Cullagh, who didn’t have her first singing lesson until she was 24, may have been a late starter but has more than made up for it with a successful international career.

Now teaching at MTU Cork School of Music, Cullagh is thrilled to play the role of Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music at the Cork Opera House. But she was initially daunted about the prospect of dialogue.

“Obviously, you don’t speak in opera. I wasn’t worried about singing any of the songs in the musical as singing is my thing. Thankfully, I’m getting on surprisingly well with the dialogue. It has been surprisingly easy to develop my own tempo and my own phrasing. To me, because I act when I sing, I’m driven by text anyway. So it’s more of the same, like singing opera.

"Rodgers and Hammerstein had an opera singer in mind when they wrote the musical. That’s why Climb Ev’ry Mountain has the ability to be so epic because they knew they were writing for a classical voice.”

The late opera singer, Cara O’Sullivan, played the same role as Cullagh in the popular musical about 15 years ago — the last time Cullagh saw The Sound of Music.

“I saw Cara in it twice. She was fantastic and was the first person I thought of when the role was offered to me. She was my friend. We trod a similar journey along the classical route. We were very different personalities and had a different timbre to our voices and a different approach.

"We were great admirers and supporters of each other. There was never any competition between each other which was wonderful. It’s the same with Mary Hegarty. I think it was down to our personalities and the people that were around us. We were secure in ourselves.”

Majella Cullagh (on right) pictured in 2018 with her fellow Cork opera singers, the late Cara O'Sullivan, and Mary Hegarty. Picture: Brian Lougheed

O’Sullivan died in 2021. “I miss her. She made me laugh all the time and understood what you were going through. She was my sister-in-song. We were bonded and she is irreplaceable. A piece of my life has closed off since Cara’s death. There is nowhere to put that emotional energy anymore. Anyone who has experienced loss will tell you that, especially when you lose people who were close to you.”

As Mother Abbess, Cullagh says she was “a little bit too benign” when rehearsals started. Part of the role of the Mother Abbess is to guide Maria whom she sees as unfocused and undisciplined.

“She sees a lot of herself in Maria. I gave Mother Abbess a back story to help me understand her. I decided that her mother died when she was young. She had loads of brothers and sisters and had to take care of them from the age of fifteen. She developed the skills to steer people into evolving and fulfilling their potential while keeping them on the right track.”

The Sound of Music is set in Austria on the eve of the Anschluss in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed its neighbour. Captain Von Trapp (for whom Maria works as a governess to his children) has to escape the Nazis when he is offered a commission in the German navy.

As a pupil at St Patrick’s Secondary School in Gardiner’s Hill, Cullagh says she loved history and was politically aware, even back in her school days. It's an interest that has helped her bring depth to her role in a classic story that's about to win over a new generation of fans.