Kane O'Hara (1711 or 1712 – 17 June 1782) was an Irish composer and playwright.

Biography

O'Hara was born at Templehouse,

Connaught Connacht or Connaught ( ; or ), is the smallest of the four provinces of Ireland, situated in the west of Ireland. Until the ninth century it consisted of several independent major Gaelic kingdoms ( Uí Fiachrach, Uí Briúin, Uí Maine ...

, Ireland, the second son of Kean O'Hara, high-sheriff of

County Sligo County Sligo ( , ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Northern and Western Region and is part of the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht. Sligo is the administrative capital and largest town in ...

. He graduated from

Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Univ ...

in 1735. In 1757 he was a co-founder member, with the

Earl of Mornington Earl of Mornington is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1760 for the Anglo-Irish politician and composer Garret Wellesley, 2nd Baron Mornington. On the death of the fifth earl in 1863, it passed to the Duke of Wellington; s ...

, of the Musical Academy in Dublin. His first publicly performed piece was the

burletta In theater and music history, a burletta (Italian, meaning "little joke", sometimes burla or burlettina) is a brief comic opera. In eighteenth-century Italy, a burletta was the comic intermezzo between the acts of an ''opera seria''. The extended w ...

Midas Midas (; ) was a king of Phrygia with whom many myths became associated, as well as two later members of the Phrygian royal house. His father was Gordias, and his mother was Cybele. The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek m ...

'', stylistically a bridge between

ballad opera The ballad opera is a genre of England, English ''comic opera'' stage play that originated in the early 18th century, and continued to develop over the following century and later. Like the earlier ''comédie en vaudeville'' and the later ''Sings ...

and

comic opera Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a ne ...

. The work mixes Irish, English, French and Italian popular airs in O'Hara's arrangements with spoken recitatives. "O'Hara's verse rarely rises above clever doggerel."O'Connell (2013), p. 765. In 1774, Kane established a theatre in Dublin called ''Mr. Punch's Patagonian Theatre'', which in 1776 transferred to London, producing

puppet show Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. Such a performan ...

versions of operas and burlettas. He went blind in 1781 but continued his interest in theatre until his death in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

the following year. A number of his papers and manuscripts are held at the

National Library of Ireland The National Library of Ireland (NLI; ) is Ireland's national library located in Dublin, in a building designed by Thomas Newenham Deane. The mission of the National Library of Ireland is "To collect, preserve, promote and make accessible the ...

Works

*'' Midas: An English Burletta'' (Dublin, 1762) *''The Golden Pippin: An English Burletta'' (London, 1773) *''The two Misers: A Musical Farce'' (London, 1775) *''April-Day. A Burletta'' (London, 1777) *''Tom Thumb the Great: A Burlesque Tragedy'' (Dublin, 1810)

Bibliography

* Margaret F. Maxwell: "Olympus at Billingsgate: The Burlettas of Kane O'Hara", in: ''Educational Theatre Journal'' 15 (1963), p. 130-135. * Ita M. Hogan: ''Anglo-Irish Music 1780–1830'' (Cork: Cork University Press, 1966). * T.J. Walsh: ''Opera in Dublin 1705–1797: the Social Scene'' (Dublin: Figgis, 1973). * Walter H. Rubsamen: "Irish Folk Music in Midas, a Ballad Burlesque of the 18th Century", in: ''IMS Congress Report Copenhagen 1972'', ed. Glahn et al. (Copenhagen, 1974), p. 623-362. * Phyllis T. Dircks: ''The Eighteenth-Century English Burletta'' (Victoria B.C.: University of Victoria Press, 1999). * Rachel Talbot: "The Influence of the Paris Stage on Kane O'Hara's ''Midas''", in
''Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland'', vol. 12 (2016–17), p. 33–66
* Michael Burden: "''Midas'', Kane O'Hara and the Italians. An Interplay of Comedy between London and Dublin", in: David O'Shaughnessy (ed.): ''Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740–1820'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 101–127.

References

External links

* Volumes originally owned by Kane O'Hara kept in th
Barry Brown Collection
at the

Library of Trinity College Dublin The Library of Trinity College Dublin () serves Trinity College, and is the largest library in Ireland. It is a legal deposit or "copyright library", which means that publishers in Ireland must deposit a copy of all their publications there ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ohara, Kane 1710s births 1782 deaths 18th-century Irish classical composers 18th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights 18th-century Irish male musicians Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Irish blind musicians Irish opera composers Irish theatre managers and producers Irish male opera composers Musicians from County Sligo