Mary O'Hara

Mary O'Hara (born 12 May 1935) is an Irish soprano and harpist from County Sligo. She achieved fame on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her recordings of that period influenced a generation of Irish female singers who credit O'Hara with influencing their style, among them Carmel Quinn, Mary Black, and Moya Brennan. In his autobiography Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour (2002), Liam Clancy wrote how her music inspired and influenced him and others of the Folk Revival period.

Mary won her first competition, Sligo's annual Music and Drama singing competition, at the age of eight, and made her first radio broadcast on Radio Éireann before she left school at the age of 16. She went on to perform at Edinburgh International Fringe Festival with the Dublin University Players, BBC's Quite Contrary and The Ed Sullivan Show, before she starred in her own BBC television series. Her first recording contract was with Decca Records. Part of her extensive music career included spending a considerable amount of time on the Aran Islands collecting folk music and acquiring fluent Gaelic.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1978 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews while filming at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu.

She was introduced to American poet Richard Selig by Irish poet Thomas Kinsella and she married Selig in 1956. She moved to the United States with him. Selig died of Hodgkin's disease 15 months after their marriage. O'Hara continued to tour and record for four years.

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