Life
1714-1783; Co. Sligo, ed. TCD; founded musical academy Dublin 1783; at Lord Mornington’s instance, wrote Midas, a travesty of the Italian burletta which had been introduced to Dublin by D’Amici family (at Brownlow’s Lough Neagh house); resided in King St., Dublin; his Midas performed at Capel St. Theatre, 1761 and afterwards at Covent Gdn.,. 1764; other works incl. The Golden Pippin (1773 Covent Gdn.), the story of Paris’s choice; Tom Thumb (Covent Gdn. 1780), adapted from Fielding’s original; O’Hara went blind in 1780; he made a portrait of [?Archb.] William King; poss. author of “The Night that Larry was Stretched”, but Tom Moore says that it was Dr. Richard Burrowes of TCD, and the Waterford balladeer William Maher are also cited. RR ODNB FQ CAB OCIL
References
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II: ‘The author of the laughable burletta of Midas, was a native of Ireland, and the younger brother of a genteel family. He had an exquisite taste in music, and uncommon skill in the burlesque. He died June 17, 1782, having for some years been deprived of his eye-sight. He also wrote The Two Misers, a musical farce; The Golden Pippin, and April Day, both burlettas; and altered Tom Thumb,” originally written by Fielding, to its present form.’ (p.457.)
Patrick Kennedy, Modern Irish Anecdotes (n.d.), chap. on O’Hara, pp.48-49, in which the ‘last line an Italian glee then popular - Che no’hanno crudelta - is rendered ‘Kane O’Hara’s cruel tall’.
Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature (London, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast & Edinburgh: Blackie & Son [1876-78]), attaches the nick-name “St Patrick’s Steeple” to him and notes: the amiable fanatica per la musica kept a puppet show for his young friends. Further cites the MS of a jeu d’esprit ‘translation’ Grigri [Portuguese to French to English by chaplain of Irish regt. in Turkish service &c.] in Irish Monthly Magazine, 1832.
Samuel O. Fitzpatrick, Dublin: A Historical and Topographical Account of the City (London: Methuen 1907) cites John O’Keeffe’s recollection that Mornington persuaded O’Hara to write Midas, a play ‘made up of Dublin jokes and by-sayings’, in opposition to the Italian burletta at Smock Alley. (p.252).
S. C. Hughes, The Church of S. Werburgh Dublin (1899), calls him a son of Francis O’Hara, a rich merchant holding family pews at S. Werburgh Church.
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946): ?1714-82; Midas, An English Burletta (Crow St., 22 Jan 1762) 1762; The Gold Pippin, Eng. burl. (CG 6 Feb 1773) 1773; The Two Misers, mus. farce (CG 21 Jan 1775) 1775, from F. de Falbaire’s Les Deux Avares (Paris 1770), mus. by Dibdin; April Day (Hay 22 Aug 1777) 1777, mus. by Arnold; Tom Thumb (CG 3 Oct 1780) 1806, based on Fielding’s.
Bartlett, Familiar Quotations [online] lists him as a burlesque writer, 1714?-1782.
Wikipedia: Midas is a burletta, or ‘mock opera’, by Kane O’Hara. Originally performed privately in 1760 near Lurgan, Ireland, it was revised and expanded with the encouragement of Lord Mornington, and was presented in its new form in Dublin in 1762 and at Covent Garden Theatre, London in 1764. Bibl., 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. (Available online; accessed 06.06.2024.)
Note that Garett Wellesley, or Wesley [Lord Mornington] was the father of Richard Colley [Marquess Wellesley; Lord Mornington] and his brother Arthur, the Duke of Wellington [q.v.] - and a distinguished composer of songs or “glees&148;, called ‘classics of their kind’ by O’Donoghue (Poets of Ireland, 1912).
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