Theater: Samuel J. Friedman / 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY,
Synopsis:
Terrence McNally's award-winning play about Maria Callas (Tyne Daly) takes us to one of her famous master classes where, late in her own career, she challenges the next generation to make the same sacrifices and dare to rise to the same heights she did, making her the most celebrated, the most reviled and the most controversial singer of her times. Daly returns to MTC after appearing in the world premiere production of David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole which garnered her a Tony nomination. She received a Tony Award for her performance in the 1989 revival of Gypsy. Daly is best known for her portrayal of 'Detective Mary Beth Lacey' in "Cagney and Lacey," for which she received four Emmy Awards. In addition, she received Emmys for "Christy," and "Judging Amy." Daly previously portrayed the role of Maria Callas in an acclaimed production at The Kennedy Center last spring.
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July 7, 2011: Towering before us — and tower she does, though she is not particularly tall — the celebrated opera singer is undeniably, overwhelmingly there. And yet she’s not there at all. One of the most daunting presences you’re ever likely to come across is, on some profound level, absent. Which makes it all the more impossible for you to take your eyes off her.
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July 7, 2011: What do opera singers do when they outlive their voices? Often they teach, and if they're famous enough, they may be invited to give "master classes" in which they work with promising students in front of an audience. Maria Callas, the most famous and admired opera singer of the 20th century, taught a series of master classes at New York's Juilliard School in 1971, six years after she retired from the stage, and Terrence McNally, who in addition to being a much-produced playwright is a well-informed opera buff and occasional librettist, used them as the basis for a 1995 play called "Master Class" that hit big on Broadway and has since been revived frequently elsewhere. Now "Master Class" has returned to Broadway by way of Washington's Kennedy Center, this time in a production starring Tyne Daly, who has admitted in numerous interviews to knowing nothing about opera, and staged by Stephen Wadsworth, a theatrical director who also has extensive opera-house experience.
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July 7, 2011: In Tyne Daly’s striking turn as Maria Callas, it’s not so much Callas’s imperiousness that comes across, as the ferocity of her self-belief. Or maybe what you feel is simply her intense need to believe in herself, a yearning stoked by the tangle of her great gifts and greater insecurities.
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July 7, 2011: Manhattan Theatre Club has imported this production of "Master Class" from the Kennedy Center's 2010 tribute to playwright Terrence McNally, where it was a sizeable hit. Spruced up with some recasting and featuring an improved turn from star Tyne Daly, the show should repeat its D.C. success.
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July 7, 2011: “Nobody cares the troubles you’ve seen,” cautions Maria Callas (Daly) in Master Class. “It’s our work that matters. Only our work.” Terrence McNally feels otherwise. His gossipy 1995 divasploitation drama depicts Callas’s excursions into teaching after her voice gave out—several passages are borrowed from her 1971 semester at Juilliard—but this setup is mostly framework for a broadly drawn, trashily colored portrait of the great soprano as an aging camp dragon with tattered scales.
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July 7, 2011: "When you're fat and ugly, you had better have a couple of high F's you can interpolate into your life." Such is the blunt advice delivered by the difficult and exacting Greek-American soprano Maria Callas to an audience of opera fans in Terrence McNally's 1995 play "Master Class," which is receiving an excellent revival from Manhattan Theatre Club starring Tyne Daly.
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July 7, 2011: Tyne Daly has said she didn’t think she was a fit to play the great and tragic opera diva Maria Callas, when playwright Terrence McNally asked her to take on the role in the current revival of his 1995 play, “Master Class” – she is not glamorous, too old, too ignorant about opera, she told him.
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