Niamh O’Sullivan is happy to be a member of the lower-voiced opera sisterhood rather than a soprano. The Cork mezzo-soprano has good reason to be content. The season brings her debuts at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, in Paris, and for Canadian Opera Company in Toronto; a return to the Royal Opera House in London; and role debuts with Irish National Opera as Ursule in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict and Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Also in the schedule are excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and recitals at the Wigmore Hall in London and at St George’s in Bristol, all with the broadcast exposure that comes with being a BBC New Generation Artist.
She wasn’t always happy about being a mezzo. “When Ronnie” – the late Veronica Dunne, her teacher – “told me”, she says, “I cried. I was, like, Nooo! I thought I was a soprano. What am I going to do now?” She has since adjusted and is quite happy about the fact that the title role in Bizet’s Carmen, Oktavian in Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier and Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther are “going to be my roles in the future”. She also sees mezzos as being “really at the fore at the moment” – indeed, though she doesn’t bring it up, Ireland’s most internationally cherished singer of the last half-century was a mezzo-soprano, Ann Murray.
There’s a freedom that goes with being in a secondary role, she says, but she has flip-flopped over her attitude to the limelight. “It’s funny. When I’m singing Mercédès in Carmen, I always say, ‘Oh, I wish I was singing the Carmen.’ And when I’m singing Carmen I say, ‘Oh, I wish I was singing Mercédès.’” But, after Carmens in Cork and Buxton (in Peter Brook’s reworking of the opera), and a 12-performance run as Mercédès at Zurich Opera House earlier this year, she has finally made up her mind. “I said, ‘This is my last Mercédès. I’m done with her.’ And I am now.”
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Smaller roles come with their own pressures. “You’ve sometimes only got one moment to show yourself, you know, whereas in a main role you can have the whole evening to kind of show off.”
I used to always look to see who was in the cast list and I’d look at the director. But now the first thing I would look at is the conductor
O’Sullivan is one of those singers who can command immediate attention. She did it to national and international acclaim at Wexford Festival Opera as Paulina in Karl Goldmark’s Ein Wintermärchen in the Covid-curtailed programme of 2021.
She says she was taught all about that in her years of apprenticeship at the opera studio of the Bavarian State Opera, in Munich. “I was, like, ‘I’ve only two lines.’ And they would say, ‘But if you do those two lines well, someone’s going to hear.’ And I was always lucky enough to be successful with the small roles. But I didn’t want to be seen as someone who’s always doing small roles, you know. There’s not that many mezzos in the middle. So you’re either doing really small roles or the title roles. And now I’m finally kind of moving into the title roles, which is really nice.”
Béatrice et Bénedict, Berlioz’s reworking of the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing, is being given a concert performance by Irish National Opera, with the spoken dialogue transformed into narration for the actor Fiona Shaw. “I’m playing the secondary role of Ursule, a lady-in-waiting. And I just kind of appear with a beautiful duet with Anna Devin as Héro. It’s, like, 13 minutes, and we haven’t worked together before. So that’ll be lovely. And then the trio with Paula Murrihy in the title role, and Anna.”
A few days later, O’Sullivan is at the Wigmore Hall, for a recital with her fellow Corkonian Gary Beecher, the pianist. “We’ve been working together since we were 10 years old,” she says. The theme of their programme is birds, and she describes recital work as “super daunting, especially staminawise. Vocally, you know, it’s only you and the piano for 60 minutes.” She agrees with the contention of the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that each song demands as much preparation as a whole opera role. But, she explains, “with an opera role, it either suits you or it doesn’t. Whereas in recital you can really cater to what your special qualities are.”
Back in Dublin in November, she takes on Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto for the first time, a real baddie role. “I’m Sparafucile’s sister in this, and I scheme with him to figure out how to do the killing. She’s a sex worker herself. She’s attracted more to the money than the men.” Sparafucile is a hired hitman, and Maddalena his bait. Her unexpected fondness for the intended victim is the fulcrum on which the tragedy turns.
Next year brings a total change, when O’Sullivan sings Ino in Handel’s Semele in Paris and London. “I got my love for baroque with Peter Whelan in Dublin, with the Irish Baroque Orchestra.” Semele is a Paris-London coproduction but one with an unusual twist. It’s being done in Paris with period instruments at baroque pitch under Emmanuelle Haïm and in London with modern instruments at higher, 21st-century pitch under Christian Curnyn.
Another unusual feature, which reeks of Hollywood-style film editing, is that the 12-minute aria she auditioned with has been cut from this production. Modern audiences are not expected to have the stamina for the long shows that were part and parcel of baroque musical life. She’s quick to add that her duet with the high-flying South African soprano Pretty Yende in the title role is definitely being included.
O’Sullivan is looking forward to the challenge of singing a single role with different conductors and at different pitches, not least because the part of Ino lies “lower than I’d usually sing. In baroque pitch it will be even lower, so, you know, you just have to kind of change gears a little bit. Even like a half a tone for a singer makes a massive difference.”
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When she was starting out, she says, “I used to always look to see who was in the cast list, and I’d look at the director. But I’d never look at the conductor. So strange. I was just kind of very new to it. But now the first thing I would look at is the conductor.”
I was always lucky enough to be successful with the small roles. But I didn’t want to be seen as someone who’s always doing small roles, you know
In Toronto, in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onégin, she sings Olga, the character whose flirtation provokes a fatal duel. O’Sullivan is super excited at making her American debut under Speranza Cappucci, the first woman to conduct a production at La Scala, in Milan, who will make her Dublin debut with the National Symphony Orchestra in an all-Ravel programme next March to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
O’Sullivan, who has shifted her base from Munich to Dublin, sometimes manages to sound elusive as a person in a way that her musical characterisations don’t. It may be just two sides of the same coin. She talks about both perspectives in relationships with conductors, directors, colleagues. She balances things. She sees the other person’s point of view.
Some things are a little more black and white. What’s best about working in opera? “It’s a cliche, but honestly it’s not like work. I mean, it feels like the easiest thing in the world to be able to do this job. You’ve the social aspect and the music. And I am literally obsessed with singing, and I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’ve been in so many places where I felt of out of place in that city I’m in. And then you go into the rehearsal room and you feel comfortable again. You feel like you’re at home again because it’s so universal. It’s amazing what music does.”
And yet “I cry every time I leave the door with my suitcases. The travel is really, really hard, and not having your circle of friends, your close people constantly with you. It’s not easy being away for your birthday every year, not being around for special family events. It’s a full-time job, and you’re never off.”
Niamh O’Sullivan is in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Tuesday, October 1st; at the Wigmore Hall, London, on Monday, October 7th; and in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, for four performances between Sunday, December 1st, and Saturday, December 7th
