Irish star soprano living a fairy tale
Tara Erraught on her stellar operatic career
Who could imagine that a knowledge of Irish would help you sing opera in the Czech language? That was Tara Erraught’s experience while preparing to sing Dvorak’s Rusalka in Munich. The Czech-language coach at The Munich Opera House is a German woman who chose to study Irish as part of her doctorate in linguistics.
‘The vowels in Irish and Czech are quite similar,’ says Tara. ‘She was able to explain to me how to pronounce Czech through using Irish.’
Tara is singing the lead in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) with Irish National Opera at The Bord Gáis Theatre from tonight. She has already sung it in Vienna, Hamburg, Washington and on a Welsh Opera tour. But she doesn’t just trot out the same performance every time. ‘I change a lot of the cadenzas in the coloratura sections. ’
Cenerentola, like most Rossini roles, demands exceptional acrobatic vocal ability. She started studying the opera when she was a student with Veronica (Ronnie) Dunne at The Royal Irish Academy of Music. She was doing it nearly every day. No matter what composer she’s practising, she winds up with Rossini. ‘The technique needed is incredibly helpful for the voice no matter what opera you’re doing.’
Her advance from student to top billing has itself a touch of Cinderella about it.
‘While studying at the RIAM, I got a job in The National Concert Hall working as an usherette. It was a great way of seeing the whole musical and cultural scene of Dublin. You learned so much just watching how people walked on or off the stage and how the audience reacted.
‘In 2007, I was still working as an usherette when I got into the final of The Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, and that was my first time to sing in the NCH. I had been working shifts that week, and it was also the first time my colleagues at the Concert Hall had heard me sing.’
She came second, and won the Best Irish Singer award. That was the start of a career that has brought her from Mexico to Japan and everywhere in between as well as a ten-year stint at the Bavarian State Opera.
From the time she was a tenyear-old, Tara, who is from Dundalk, says she was ‘a Feis addict’ performing widely. But the experience that changed her life was a family trip to Verona, aged 13, where she heard Aida, ‘with the spectacle, the choruses, everything, and I totally knew this could be for me’.
‘In the third year of my degree course I got offers of work, and at the end of the year I was offered a place at the Bavarian State Opera. I was travelling over and back from Munich for my exams.’ After two years there, she got a principal soloist role at the Opera.
In Bavaria, she made an astonishing 47 role debuts. ‘I debuted absolutely everything, including the three main female roles in various productions of The Marriage of Figaro.’
But she’s a quick learner. ‘I think that comes from things like the Feis Ceoil. There were always things to be done for college while doing the Feis, so you had to learn songs quickly.’
‘With the spectacle, the choruses... I totally knew this could be for me’