Cara O'Sullivan obituary: Charisma and warmth brought Cara's talent and technical perfection to audience she cherished
'Cara was the kindest, warmest, most supportive colleague who fully appreciated the momentous teamwork that an orchestral or operatic production entails.' Picture: Cillian Kelly / News Digital
Cara O'Sullivan was pure class. Her voice could be golden, velvet or chocolate, or steel, ice, or like a laser. Her tuning was impeccable. Her sense of phrasing and line, exquisite.
She was capable of the most jaw-dropping vocal fireworks, but often it was her delivery of the simplest phrase that melted the hearts of an audience. Her musical tastes were wide, performing repertoire from opera and art songs to folk tunes and parlour songs.
She was against snobbery. She brought everything to an audience with openness, trusting that if she delivered the performance honestly, with technical accuracy and with a total commitment from the heart, they would be as moved by the music as she was.
Cara was a diva only in the sense that there was something of the divine about her performance. When she walked on stage, she emanated an aura of warmth and connection to the audience. She was charismatic, and there was always a frisson that something special would happen.
We performed countless concerts and gigs together where I conducted or played piano. She always established and cherished the warmest feeling with the audience, and taught me a lot in doing it.
In her concerts, she used humour to make the audience (and her fellow performers) feel at ease. Some of the one-liners that Cara came up with during a series of concerts with Ciara Moroney and myself (on two pianos) had us both nearly on the floor in stitches laughing – trying to hold it together before we plunged into the next Mozart or Rossini aria.
Cara wanted every performance to be the best it could possibly be. She worked extremely hard to make each performance something special and she trusted in her colleagues to help her deliver.
As well as being a towering, mesmeric individual presence, she was warm and encouraging to younger singers. She was helpful and practical in the organisation of projects and of our lives. She was also the kindest, warmest, most supportive colleague who fully appreciated the momentous teamwork that an orchestral or operatic production entails.
She was iconic, and she was local. She was very proud of Cork, and wanted it to be its best. She did so much for her native city. Her charity work was immense, and she would pull many of us in to play for all kinds of causes and civic events.
Cara and I were operatic collaborators for 20 years. From the start, she was supportive and invested. In by Verdi, I was a young assistant conductor, but she treated me with great respect – eager to hear my notes and suggestions.
Her performance as Amelia was tragic, thrilling, heart-stopping. In Dido and Aeneas, (the only time she shared the operatic stage with both of her supremely talented close friends Mary Hegarty and Majella Cullagh) she played noble and ignoble, impulsive and then stoic, as both Dido and her nemesis the Sorceress, and all while dealing with a set of revolving shards of metal, a cast of wonderful musician-actors who had to deal with memorising the score with no conductor, and having to die upside-down with a massive wig/head-piece!
As Nedda in , she embraced the whole circus of it all. Onstage, she was passionate, cruel, funny and vulnerable. Offstage she was a powerful support for the creative team, and a constant cheerleader for the whole, enormous, cast.
In , as the orchestra surrounded her on the stage, she played Marguerite with love, dignity, power and despair, and broke all of our hearts in the final transfiguration.
She sang numerous first performances and recordings of works by Irish composers, and was always interested in helping composers find their voice.
As a composer, she commissioned me to write arrangements of a collection of Percy French and Thomas Moore songs for orchestra, and premiered the role of the Moon in the concert performance of my opera – a precious memory that will stay with me forever.
When we got to make the full production of , Cara was no longer able to perform on stage. Her close friend Majella took the role. Cara came to a performance to support the production. There's a part in the opera in which the whole audience joins in with the full cast.
I will remember her talent, artistry, and the sheer beauty of her sound that often left the rest of us catching our breath. And I will also remember the most warm, generous and supportive collaborator and friend.
The words from Oscar Wilde's story that we all sang that night seem especially poignant to me now:
'Sing me one last song. I shall feel very lonely when you are gone.'
