Mary O’Hara, Irish soprano and harpist, was born in 1935 in Sligo, Ireland. She began singing at an early age and first learned to play the harp from Máirín Ní Shéa for a school pageant. She won her first singing competition at the Sligo Feis Ceóil at the age of eight and appeared on her first broadcast on Radio Éireann before she left school at the age of sixteen. In 1955, she rose to greater fame when she performed at the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts and was featured on the cover of Irish Digest. Also that year, poet Thomas Kinsella introduced her to the American poet Richard Selig, whom she married in 1956. Fifteen months later, Selig died of Hodgkin’s disease. O’Hara continued to perform for four years, releasing three albums – Songs of Erin (1957), Love Songs of Ireland (1958), and Songs of Ireland (1958). She also recorded one track for The Folk Tradition in 1960.

In 1962, O’Hara entered Stanbrook Abbey, where she remained as a nun for twelve years. In 1974, she returned to her musical career and garnered much international acclaim until her retirement in 1994. During this second span as a performing artist, O’Hara released eighteen albums, hosted a series of radio and television programs, and wrote several books – her autobiography, The Scent of the Roses (1980), a coffee table book, A Song for Ireland (1982), and an anthology of her favorite readings, Celebration of Love (1985). In 1985, she married Dr. Padraig O’Toole. Following her retirement, she and O’Toole lived in Africa for six years where he taught at the Tanzania School of Journalism and where they both worked with children with AIDS in Dar es Salaam and street children in Nairobi. In 2005, O’Hara began giving a series of talks entitled Travels With My Harp, which resulted in five published volumes of harp music, accompanying CDs, and a revised and updated autobiography. In 2007, Harp on the Willow, a musical play about O’Hara’s life, premiered with much success in Australia.

O’Hara’s nephew is playwright and author Sebastian Barry, son of her sister, the late actress Joan O’Hara.

She currently divides her time living on the Aran Islands and in Spain.

Sources

“Mary O’Hara.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_O'Hara.

Mary O’Hara official website. Accessed September 9, 2013. http://www.maryohara.co.uk/.

O'Hara, Mary. The Scent of the Roses. London: Michael Joseph, 1980.

_____. Travels With My Harp. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd., 2012.