Death announced of influential Cork impresario Barra Ó Tuama

The late Barra Ó Tuama, pictured in 2003. File Picture: John Sheehan Photography / Irish Examiner Archive

Barra Ó Tuama, one of Cork's leading impresarios, has passed away, his family have confirmed.

Mr Ó Tuama died peacefully at St Luke's Home on Wednesday.

Having grown up close to Cork Opera House, music was always one of his great passions. He told the in 2011 that, even in the economically challenging 1940s, opera performances in Ireland always managed to draw large crowds.

“We were a large family growing up on the northside of Cork City, and there wasn’t any money going spare, but there was always music," he said at the time.

When the opera came to town I’d be begging halfpennies so I could climb up to the ‘gods’ of the old Opera House and listen. 

"I remember one week I managed to see Lucia di Lammermoor three times.”

Over the course of multiple trips abroad in the 1970s and early 1980s while working for an agricultural company, Mr Ó Tuama took in performances at many of Europe's greatest opera houses.

In 1985, he decided to turn his passion into his profession, establishing a promotions company in a bid to bring some of these great performers to Ireland and to Cork.

“I knew how Irish people loved opera, and I felt they should get the chance to hear these incredible singers too.," he said.

The first ever Opera Gala took place that same year, with Giuseppe di Stefano — the man Luciano Pavarotti once described as his "idol" — heading the bill.

The inaugural night got off to a rocky start however, when Di Stefano announced he could not perform to the best of his abilities due to illness. 

Luckily for the audience, Mario Malagnini, a singer who would go on to garner international acclaim in his own right, ably stepped up and filled in.

From there, Mr Ó Tuama never looked back. For over two decades, the firm bearing his name brought some of the world's most acclaimed opera performers to Ireland and Leeside.

“I used to go out and search across the world for new rising talent and bring it back so that Irish audiences could hear these fantastic voices before they became household names," he told the Irish Examiner in 2011.

Mr Ó Tuama eventually stepped back from the business in 2005, at which point it was being effectively run by his daughter, Deirdre. He continued to travel and attend operas at home and abroad in his later years, however.

His death notice on RIP.ie reads: "Barra, dearly loved husband of Mary (née Scanlan), loving father of Déirdre, Emer, Fiona, Fergus and Áine and dear brother of Bríd and the late Concubhar, Seán, Máire, Aodh, Padraig, Liam and Tadhg.

"Sadly missed by his loving wife, family, sons-in-law, his 10 grandchildren, his six great-grandchildren, nephews, nieces, relatives, and many friends."