From the Bookshelf of Patti LuPone Reads…

Master Class.

Terrence McNally

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Nov 18, 2008 Bill rated it really liked it

Are we really missing something when we read a play, as opposed to watching a performance of it? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. I suppose it depends on the richness of the text itself, and whether the characters, stage direction, and dialogue are so vivid that you can actually see the performance in your head. With this in mind, I must say I really enjoyed reading Terrence McNally's 1995 play Master Class. It played beautifully in my imagination.

Unfortunately, I've never seen an actual performanc Are we really missing something when we read a play, as opposed to watching a performance of it? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. I suppose it depends on the richness of the text itself, and whether the characters, stage direction, and dialogue are so vivid that you can actually see the performance in your head. With this in mind, I must say I really enjoyed reading Terrence McNally's 1995 play Master Class. It played beautifully in my imagination.

Unfortunately, I've never seen an actual performance of any of McNally's play, but I hope to do so when his next play opens on Broadway. But I have read another one of his plays, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and enjoyed that play as well.

Master Class is an altogether different piece for McNally because its main protagonist was a real person. The character? La Divina, the legendary opera star Maria Callas. McNally based Master Class on the vocal classes she coached at Julliard toward the end of her life.

Let's not mince words...on the surface, McNally's Maria Callas is a first-class, grade A, all-around bitch. She's self-absorbed, she's narcissistic, she's intensely critical of her students, she's demanding, she's ruthless...she's even human.

The play is simple..Maria Callas holds private vocal lessons for three music students (two women, one man). And that's it. On the surface, at least.

McNally's Callas expects her students to know exactly what she expects, how they are to improve according to her standards, no matter how vague her instructions are. Callas has set her standards skyward and expects nothing but perfection.

In between her brutal criticism, her pontification, her tearing down the confidence of her students, Callas relives her key events in her life through her imagination, which sort of serve as a peephole into her psyche. Her first performance, the jealousy she felt from her former fellow performers, the abortion she had at baby daddy Aristotle Onassis's insistence (even though he originally told her he would love the child she would bear him, if she ever bore him a child, but never her). Perhaps the most vicious revelation is from Callas's final student, who reveals out loud that, after 10 years as a renown opera diva, Callas has lost her voice and is jealous of her students--for they have what she herself will never have again.

McNally's Callas is so complex--you hate her on one page and completely empathize with her on the next.

The published play features a series of photographs from the original Broadway production of Master Class, with Zoe Caldwell portraying Callas. But also of note is that Caldwell's replacement was none other than Patti LuPone. Both performers earned rave reviews during the play's original Broadway run.

Now if only there were a revival...After all it's been almost ten years. Isn't it time? I think so. I just hope it lives up to my imagination...

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Nov 17, 2011 Alyssa rated it it was amazing

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