From rock start to opera star to cabaret star
Go! feature
As a child growing up in Northern Ontario, Patricia O’Callaghan wanted to be a rock star.
As a child growing up in Northern Ontario, Patricia O’Callaghan wanted to be a nun.
There’s a lot of space between the two career options. And there’s a lot of space between Northern Ontario and Mexico, where she spent a year in high school as an exchange student and where she achieved some kind of career epiphany.
“When you’re removed from your normal environment, you sometimes begin to see things in a different light,” she said. “I had just started studying classical music when I realized that if I became an opera singer, I would still get to sing, but I would also be able to live a very disciplined life.”
Through the years, however, she began to drift away from the opera, finding it to be, ironically, disciplined to the point of self-absorption.
“When I was doing a lot of opera, I found my life really limited,” she said. “You’re always concerned about your voice and so you become really self-involved … and I really didn’t like that.”
So when she discovered the work of Kurt Weill, she found another, more satisfying compromise: the cabaret.
“I started singing it and got really interested in the way that high art meets low art,” she said. “It wasn’t classical, but he had all the classical training so that came through.”
Drawing on her classical training and knowledge of French, Spanish and German, O’Callaghan peppers her concerts with these languages, along with tunes by Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and some of her original compositions.
- WHAT: Patricia O’Callaghan
- WHERE: Fitton Center for Creative Arts, 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton
- WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
- COST: $15 members; $17 non-members; $6 students
- MORE INFO: (513) 863-8873; www.fittoncenter.org
