Master Class | |
---|---|
Written by | Terrence McNally |
Characters |
|
Date premiered | November 5, 1995 |
Place premiered | John Golden Theatre New York City, New York |
Original language | English |
Subject | A diva holds a master class in voice for the opera |
Genre | Drama |
Setting | A master class with Maria Callas in the 1970s |
Master Class is a 1995 play by American playwright Terrence McNally, presented as a fictional master class by opera singer Maria Callas near the end of her life, in the 1970s. The play features incidental vocal music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini. The play opened on Broadway in 1995, with stars Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald winning Tony Awards.
The opera diva Maria Callas, a glamorous, commanding, larger-than-life, caustic, and surprisingly funny pedagogue is holding a singing master class. Alternately dismayed and impressed by the students who parade before her, she retreats into recollections about the glories of her own life and career. Included in her musings are her younger years as an ugly duckling, her fierce hatred of her rivals, the unforgiving press that savaged her early performances, her triumphs at La Scala, and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis. It culminates in a monologue about sacrifice taken in the name of art.
The play originally was staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company in March 1995, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kennedy Center. [1]
The play premiered on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre on November 15, 1995 and closed on June 29, 1997 after 598 performances and twelve previews. Directed by Leonard Foglia, the original cast featured Zoe Caldwell (as Callas), Audra McDonald (as Sharon), Karen Kay Cody, David Loud, Jay Hunter Morris, and Michael Friel. [2] Patti LuPone (from July 1996) and Dixie Carter (from January 1997) [3] subsequently replaced Caldwell as Callas, Matthew Walley replaced Morris and Alaine Rodin replaced McDonald later in the run. LuPone played the role in the West End production at the Queens Theatre, opening in April 1997 (previews) [3] [4] and Faye Dunaway played the role in the U.S. national tour in 1996. [5]
Master Class ran at the Kennedy Center from March 25, 2010 to April 18, 2010, directed by Stephen Wadsworth and starring Tyne Daly as Callas. [6] The play was then revived on Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, running from June 14, 2011 (previews) to September 4, 2011 for 70 regular performances and 26 previews. Directed by Stephen Wadsworth, the cast featured Tyne Daly as Callas, with Sierra Boggess as Sharon and Alexandra Silber as Sophie. [7] This production transferred to the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre from January to April 2012, with Daly as Callas and Naomi O'Connell as Sharon. [8] [9]
A 2010/11 UK touring production of the play, starred Stephanie Beacham as Callas [10]
A production in Paris, Master Class – La leçon de chant (the singing lesson) in 1997 starred Fanny Ardant as Callas and was directed by Roman Polanski. [11] It was revived twice starring Marie Laforêt in 2000 and 2008. [12]
In 1997, Norma Aleandro played the role of Maria Callas at the Teatro Maipo in Buenos Aires directed by Agustín Alezzo. In 2012, Aleandro and Alezzo did a new version of the play.
An Australian production in 1997 starred Robyn Nevin as Callas. Nevin played the role in Brisbane and Sydney. Amanda Muggleton then played Callas in Adelaide in 1998 and Melbourne in 1999. Muggleton reprised the role in the 2001/02 Australian touring production and won the 2002 Helpmann Award for Best Actress in a Play. [13]
Jelisaveta Seka Sablić played Callas in the 1997 production of the Bitef theater, before touring other Belgrade and Serbian theaters, and Switzerland in 2005. Soprano Radmila Smiljanić was a music supervisor. Sablić was awarded the Miloš Žutić Award for the role. [14] [15]
In 2014, Maria Mercedes brought the work to life again in Australia to critical acclaim: "It's an awe-inspiring performance by any measure." [16] She was nominated for a number of awards, winning the Green Room Award for Female Performer for Independent Theatre. [17] Her portrayal is the first time in professional theatre that a woman of Greek heritage has played Maria Callas. The production moved to Sydney in August 2015, before returning to Melbourne in September. [18]
In 2018 and 2019 a production of Master Class took place in Athens, Greece, at the Dimitris Horn Theatre with Greek actress Maria Nafpliotou in the starring role. The production has also received critical acclaim and by February 2019 counted 125 consecutive sold out performances. [19]
Ben Brantley, in his review of the 2011 Broadway revival for The New York Times wrote that, although Master Class is not "a very good play", he felt that Tyne Daly "transforms that script into one of the most haunting portraits I've seen of life after stardom." [20]
Master Class won both the 1996 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play and the 1996 Tony Award for Best Play. Zoe Caldwell won the 1996 Tony Award for Actress in a Play, and Audra McDonald won the 1996 Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play. [2]
The 2011 revival received a 2012 Tony Award nomination, Best Revival of a Play. [21]
Gypsy: A Musical Fable is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. It is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business mother." It follows the dreams and efforts of Rose to raise two daughters to perform onstage and casts an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life. The character of Louise is based on Lee, and the character of June is based on Lee's sister, the actress June Havoc.
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
Patti Ann LuPone is an American actress and singer best known for her work in musical theater. After starting her professional career with The Acting Company in 1972 she soon gained acclaim for her leading performances on the Broadway and West End stage. She has won three Tony Awards, two Olivier Awards, and two Grammy Awards, and was a 2006 inductee to the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Ellen Tyne Daly is an American actress. She has won six Emmy Awards for her television work, a Tony Award and is a 2011 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee.
Audra Ann McDonald is an American actress and singer. Primarily known for her work on the Broadway stage, she has won six Tony Awards, more performance wins than any other actor, and is the only person to win in all four acting categories. In addition to her six Tony Awards she's received numerous accolades including two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2016 from President Barack Obama, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.
Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice, in 2002 for her role as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and in 2011 for her performance as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, a role which she reprised in 2021 for a production in London and for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, and The Music Man. On television, Foster played the lead role in the short-lived ABC Family comedy-drama Bunheads from 2012 to 2013. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.
Judy Kaye is an American singer and actress. She has appeared in stage musicals, plays, and operas. Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Mamma Mia!, and Nice Work If You Can Get It.
Kelli Christine O'Hara is an American actress and singer, most known for her work on the Broadway and opera stages.
Zoe Ada Caldwell was an Australian actress. She was a four-time Tony Award winner, winning Best Featured Actress in a Play for Slapstick Tragedy (1966), and Best Actress in a Play for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), Medea (1982), and Master Class (1996). Her film appearances include The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Birth (2004), and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011).
Janice Elaine Maxwell was an American stage and television actress. She was a five-time Tony Award nominee and two-time Drama Desk Award winner. In a career spanning over thirty years, Maxwell was one of the most celebrated and critically acclaimed stage actresses of her time.
Laura Ilene Benanti is an American actress and singer. Over the course of her Broadway career, she has received five Tony Award nominations. She played Louise in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Benanti then appeared in the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, winning the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played Elsa Schräder in the 2013 NBC television production of The Sound of Music Live! and, in 2015, began playing Supergirl's twin mother and aunt Alura and Astra in the TV series Supergirl. Benanti appeared as Edie Randall in the TBS comedy The Detour from 2017 until the show's cancellation in 2019. Since 2016, she has had a recurring role as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Norm Lewis is an American actor and baritone singer. He has appeared on Broadway, in the West End, film, television, recordings and regional theatre. He’s also noted for his wide vocal range. Lewis was the second African-American actor after Robert Guillaume to perform in the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and the first one to do so in the Broadway production. In 2023, he reprised the role in the show's sequel, Love Never Dies, in London's West End.
Skylight is a play by British dramatist David Hare. The play premiered in the West End at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1995, moving to the Wyndham's Theatre in 1996. After opening on Broadway in 1996, it played again in the West End in 1997 at the Vaudeville Theatre. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End in 2014, and that production transferred to Broadway in 2015.
Barbara Walsh is an American musical theatre actress who has appeared in several prominent Broadway productions. Walsh is known for her Drama Desk Award and Tony Award nominated role as Trina in the original Broadway production of Falsettos, as well as her turn as Joanne in the 2006 Broadway Revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Company.
Danny Burstein is an American actor and singer. Known for his work on the Broadway stage, he's received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, two Drama Desk Awards and nominations for three Grammy Awards.
Ted Sperling is a musical director, conductor, orchestrator, arranger, stage director and musician, primarily for the stage and concerts. He won the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations and the Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Orchestrations, for his work in The Light in the Piazza in 2005. He is the Artistic Director of MasterVoices, formerly the Collegiate Chorale.
Ragtime is a musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally. It is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by E.L. Doctorow.
Mothers and Sons is a play by Terrence McNally, which opened on Broadway in 2014.
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is a jukebox musical featuring several of Billie Holiday's most famous songs. The play was written by Lanie Robertson and recounts some events in the life of Holiday. It premiered in 1986 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and soon played Off-Broadway. The play opened on Broadway in 2014, and also played in London's West End in 2017.
Thomas Joseph Kirdahy is an American Tony and Olivier Award-winning theatrical producer, lawyer, and activist.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)