Majella Cullagh

Majella Cullagh has become one of the most prominent singers in Ireland, with a long résumé of performances across the British Isles, and as far away as New Zealand. Her repertory, encompassing Handel, Mozart, bel canto, mid-19th century opera, and contemporary music, includes a number of little-known works. Cullagh was born in Blackpool, a suburb of Cork, Ireland. She grew up poor in a home with no running water. "My childhood was idyllic. I felt totally safe. But it was also like something out of Angela's Ashes. It was always raining," she told Ciara Dwyer of the Irish Independent. Both her parents sang, and her own musical talents were noticed. But she was steered toward the piano after crying in the car all the way home from a performance of Verdi's La Traviata: her father did not realize it was because she had been moved by the story. As a young woman, Cullagh got a job as a dental assistant in Cork but sang in choirs after work, and again her talent was noticed. She began taking voice lessons with Bobby Beare and then Maeve Coughlan at the Cork School of Music, enthusiastically taking up Italian (and learning to speak it fluently) after flirting with a waiter in Naples on a vacation (the relationship lasted for more than 20 years, on and off). She has also studied in Britain and the U.S. with Gerald Martin Moore, whose other students have included Renée Fleming. Cullagh made her debut in 1993 in Craig y Nos, Wales, in Donizetti's Il campanello. She has appeared at a wide range of Irish, British, and European opera houses and festivals, including in the role of Melissa in Handel's Amadigi at Covent Garden in London, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and houses in Lisbon and Oporto, Portugal. Her repertory includes major bel canto works by Rossini and others, and her range extends comfortably forward to Verdi and Puccini. Cullagh also appeared in the title role in Gavin Bryars' Medea in a BBC Scotland production. Some of her roles, such as the title part in Saverio Mercadante's Zaira (1831), are unusual, and it was this that led to the beginning of her recording career; mentored by Patric Schmid of the Opera Rara label, she recorded several albums of rare material for that label. In 2019, she was heard on the Naxos label in a recording of English composer Alfred Cellier's all-but-forgotten opera Dorothy. ~ James Manheim