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Close this windowReluctant star turned her back on fame
A CONVERSATION with MARY O’HARA, singer, harpist and author
In a world where celebrities are guilefully created and worshipped and ‘originality’ as a concept concocted by marketers is slavishly followed, Mary is a refreshing counterpoint – she has never sought the spotlight and consistently run against the grain of what was fashionable. She has twice turned her back on fame and fortune and abruptly disappeared; once to embrace religious life, and later to live anonymously in Africa. She says that her career, spanning more than half a decade, has always involved a “reluctant yes” to the spotlight. Although in later life she has come to acknowledge that her music is a form of ministry to others. Mary is currently in Australia to appear at performances of the award-winning play about her extraordinary life, Harp on the Willow, by Australian writer John Misto. Melbourne’s audiences have been delighted with Mary’s appearance on stage to speak briefly and answer their questions. “This is wonderful surprise,” she says. “No one more surprised than I, especially after saying, ‘I will not, I will not’.” One of Australia’s own favourite artists, Marina Pryor, has twice played her character, Sr Miriam. The first production – a sell-out for 13 weeks – at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre also starred Marina Pryor. This current production, directed by Sydney-based Andrew Doyle, also stars international opera soprano Joan Carden. During this second season, in Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre, Mary agreed to address the audience at the end of the play on the condition that she did not have to watch it. She has an interesting deal with John Misto; he had carte blanche to dramatise her life using whatever devices he saw fit, but she would never see it. She is not even curious to know the details of the plot. “That’s artistic licence,” she says. “It’s the reason we’re both happy for me not to see it. He has ideas that grow and develop and all that mustn’t be interfered with by me.” “When I come on to the stage they are so warm and welcoming. They have had a wonderful night with the play and they often want to know, ‘Did you see the doctor again?’ “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I tell them ‘You’re one up on me because I haven’t seen this play’.” Mary’s first trip to Australia was for a six-week concert tour in 1959 at the height of her fame. She was heading a revival of folk music which stayed through the 60s. Australians loved the gentle, dark-haired beauty and wanted more of her clear, pure voice, the same voice that had stunned judges of the Sligo annual Music and Drama singing competition when she was only eight. Mary became famous at the age of 18 after a radio broadcast of her voice and her performance of classical music and traditional songs in Celtic. She had learnt to sing and play the harp in her Catholic boarding school, and continued with professional training. At 25 she was a superstar and already a widow. Her young husband, American poet Richard Selig, whom she had married when she was 20, had died of cancer soon after their first wedding anniversary. Mary’s autobiography recounts that he said he first fell in love with her voice while listening to her on the radio. That six-week tour of Australia was extended to 12 months, including sell-out concerts in Sydney and Melbourne, a radio series for the ABC and a 13-part television series recorded in Melbourne. All the while she was secretly preparing to enter religious life and trying to discern with her friend and spiritual director, a Dominican, which monastic order to enter. She settled on the Benedictine monastery at Stanbrook in England and entered there in 1962 without a public goodbye. She says that part of the reason she entered religious life was in gratitude to God for the gift of her marriage to Richard. Mary intended to remain there for life, but ill health forced her to leave after a dozen years or so. She still keeps in touch with the sisters and counts them among her friends. Her faith sustains her every day. “My faith is the most precious thing I have in my life,” she says. Mary did not know that while she had been cloistered, her fame had grown and her albums were reissued. She wanted to devote the rest of her life to social work, but it was not to be. She was invited to appear on a popular late night TV talk show a mere three weeks after leaving the monastery. “I didn’t particularly want to go back to singing,” she says. “I’ve always been rather a reluctant performer anyway, but (my return to the spotlight) was almost immediate and totally unplanned. “I had felt I should do some social work, but one of my friends said, ‘That’s ridiculous, firstly you’d be hopeless at it’, and the other said, ‘Well, your music is your social work’. “By then I had already been deluged with requests to perform. “I was urged and I kept putting it off. Eventually I had to succumb. I had to be dragged in and dragged in front of the TV camera, and the reception was so incredibly warm around the country and everywhere that I had to go on the next week and again three or four weeks later. “Once the word was out that I was at large again the work started pouring in.” Mary says she found it quite easy adapting to the outside world, partly because the nuns kept abreast of current events through the international Catholic weekly paper, The Tablet and also The Times newspaper. But there were a few things she needed help with including not knowing where to shop or what size clothes she needed. Mary’s three books, The Scent of the Roses, A Song for Ireland and A Celebration of Love, all written or compiled in the 1980s were also the result of a “reluctant yes” to perform, this time from publishers. She continued recording and touring, including to Australia again in 1981, 1983 and 1986. In 1985 Mary married her second husband, writer and university lecturer Dr Padraig O’Toole, and she accompanied him to Africa during the 90s where Pat had a teaching position in Kenya. They spent two years in Kenya and later another four years in Tanzania. “It was highly adventurous and we loved every minute,” Mary says. “We loved the people and the places, it is an extraordinary beautiful country, and we learnt the language, Kiswahili, as well.” Mary says she enjoyed a “hedonistic” expatriate life in Africa, by which she means she spent leisurely time swimming, playing tennis and socialising, but she also did some charity work, teaching songs and playing with AIDS orphans and other disadvantaged children in institutions. “It was a joy and a privilege,” she says. While they were in Tanzania they received an email from John Misto, whom Mary had never heard of. He had been trying to find her for five years. “He finally traced me through the nuns at Stanbrook,” she says. “He had read The Scent of the Roses and fell in love with the story and he was looking for my permission to dramatise it. “The idea didn’t appeal to me at all, but I discussed it with my husband and in the end I gave him carte blanche to do what he liked with it and wished him well. “I thought I would never hear of it again, but then, of course, here I am today.” Mary has retired from performing music but embarked on a new venture as a public speaker, giving her first talk called Travels with My Harp at the World Harp Conference about 18 months ago. The hour and a half talk is interspersed with video clips of some of her songs. “The talks are a great success,” she says. “When I get back I am giving one at the eighth International summer school over in the west of Ireland, Sligo, my home town, and I’m invited to give one at the European Harp Symposium in Wales towards the end of the (Northern) summer.” She is also writing down her harp arrangements for prosperity, a mammoth task she has been asked to do for years. With her husband’s help she has just completed the second volume, and is starting on the third. “The songs I’ve sung with the harp are legion,” she laughs. What is her favourite? “Well I like them all well enough to sing them, but perhaps The Lark in the Clear Air, because it is such a lovely song,” she says. For pleasure she listens to Baroque music. Today Mary and Pat live in a 17th century cottage in Berkshire in the south of England. |
