Bay Street Theater's 'Master Class' Is a Lesson in Humility

There is a moment in the opening scene of Bay Street Theater’s captivating production of “Master Class” where the audience feels the full force of the pressure that will soon be brought to bear on a trio of unsuspecting opera students on stage.

It’s a moment that’s designed to make you squirm a little — and it certainly does. But it’s a moment that also offers a glimpse into the complexities of a character that you will come to know, for better and for worse, over the course of the next two acts. Turning the tables is a theme in “Master Class,” Terrence McNally’s poignantly biting and insightful 1995 play, and it offers a revealing portrait of the 20th century’s most famous grand dame of the operatic stage.

With the house lights up and the theater pin-drop quiet, a steely-eyed and aging Maria Callas (played brilliantly by Vicki Lewis) appears on stage and turns her critical gaze toward all of us. It’s New York City in the early 1970s and we are seated in a rehearsal room at The Juilliard School on the Upper West Side. The dark paneled, vertical wood-slatted walls at the rear of the stage speak to their acoustic design along with a mid-century modern aesthetic. Callas, dressed in a colorful, two-piece paisley pantsuit, makes it crystal clear to all assembled that we are there to observe. We are to refrain from applause, she cautions, before getting personal by making pointed comments to “victims” in the audience seated closest to the stage.

It’s a clever way to set the tenor, if you will, for the evening, and in a preview of the play last Thursday evening, Lewis went on to give a mesmerizing performance as she made it crystal clear that no one in the room would escape the critical scrutiny of the doyenne of opera.

Lisa Peterson directs this powerful production, and while it’s rounded out by a talented supporting cast — Brett Ryback as accompanist (and obvious Callas groupie) Manny Weinstock, along with Stella Kim, Olivia Hernandez and Rodney Ingram who play the three vocal students Sophie De Palma, Sharon Graham and Anthony Candolino, respectively — this is Lewis’s show to own, as it should be. For all practical purposes, “Master Class” is an intense solo piece. The amount of material that Lewis has had to process in coming to this role is astounding — to say nothing of the challenge involved in perfecting Callas’s unusual accent, with its Greek overtones, and the opera speak, which is predominately Italian.

It’s not always easy to capture the essence of a real-life figure on stage, and it turns out that “Master Class” is based on an actual series of classes that Callas gave at Juilliard in the early 1970s. McNally, an obvious opera fan, cleverly structured the script so that the serious singing — works by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and Vincenzo Bellini — is done not by the actress playing Callas (she has enough to do already) but by the young students, all of whom are well-cast in this production with incredibly powerful voices. Their musical selections for the class, while brief, provide the vehicle that transports Callas emotionally out of the room and back in time to the opera stages and dressing rooms around the world where she experienced her biggest triumphs and her most tragic personal defeats.

There’s a lot to process here.

Callas was born in New York in 1923. Her parents, Greek immigrants, had a troubled marriage and by 1937, Callas was living back in Greece with her mother and older sister. It was there that Callas received her foundational training as an opera singer before returning to New York in 1945, where her career took off.

But hers was not an easy path, as she frequently reminds us in “Master Class.” The play makes it clear that throughout her life, Callas was perceived as a very complicated and intelligent woman at a time when neither were particularly valued. She was labeled difficult, and among the details that we learn in the play is that after struggling through WWII in Greece, she came of age as an overweight, near-sighted girl who was frequently reminded of her physical shortcomings. As a result, she developed a tough exterior, but suffered great insecurities throughout her life. Along the way, she broke the heart of her husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, by leaving him for Aristotle Onassis, who subsequently insisted Callas abort their baby before he, in turn, left her for Jacqueline Kennedy. Her powerful voice was built by pain, and ultimately, it, too, was lost, and now she is ready to share all that she has experienced, along with some hard-earned wisdom, to her hapless students.

As she works with the young singers one by one, Callas’s frustration is evident. Sophie de Palma (Stella Kim), Callas’s first student of the day, is terrified as she attempts to sing an aria from Bellini’s “La Sonnambula.” In comical fashion, Callas repeatedly interrupts Sophie after just the first note. She berates the student for not truly listening to the music as well as her appalling lack of preparation.

Going gentle on the students is not in her nature. Callas feels everything in life and music deeply, and her exasperation lies in the fact that the young singers don’t even understand the words they are singing, much less possess the emotional depth and maturity required to make them meaningful.

Therein lies Callas’s greatest strength as well as her most debilitating weakness. Her ability to feel passionately may have served her well on the stage, but in her personal life, her emotional volatility has left her devastated — just like the plot of most operas.

As a teacher, Callas is complex. By turns brutal and supportive, she can be sympathetic one moment, and cuttingly cruel in the next. But even the cutting that drives students to tears is done with a subtle touch of affection, as if it’s simply a professional desire to speak the truth and strive for excellence. She also justifies her harsh approach by maintaining that she is sparing the more mediocre students from a life of misery.

As Callas, Lewis is truly La Divina. Her expressive countenance takes viewers back to the heights of her most triumphant moments in her career. Using the student’s voices as the jumping off point, the music crescendos with recordings of Callas’s famous voice performing the works of Verdi and others as the rehearsal room transforms into the stage of Milan’s La Scala, the tiered boxes of the famed opera house projected magnificently onto the back wall of the set. All the while, the students pantomime the opera as they stand by the piano, Callas reverting further into her own reveries as her mind relives her achievements in the limelight.

But we are no longer in 1950s Milan. It’s now 1972 and this class is at Juilliard where an aging Callas, her voice no longer capable of hitting a high “C” or many other notes, is resigned to coaching the next generation of opera hopefuls, whom she finds hopelessly underprepared.

For all its seriousness, this is a play with liberal doses of humor, including the war of wills between Callas and a disgruntled and disinterested stage hand (played by Ben Rauch) who is put out by the diva’s seemingly endless requests to make her time in the rehearsal space more comfortable. It’s a bit of lighthearted stage business that brightens the mood and helps shape her persnickety character. Anyone who has simultaneously suffered through, yet been inspired, by a great teacher will recognize Callas’s modus operandi. She is, by turns, terrifying in her criticism and effusive in her praise. The beautiful thing about “Master Class” is you don’t need to know a thing about opera to feel Lewis’s powerful command of the lead role on stage.

Unfortunately, Callas lived in an era when the whims and will of men still figured prominently in a woman’s life, no matter how successful she became on her own. As she coaches this next generation of opera singers, we know things will be different for them — or at least we hope they will be. While there’s a slim chance that even one of these singers will obtain anything near the greatness of Maria Callas in their own careers, it’s fair to expect that the options and choices they have in life and love will be far greater than those La Divina ever had in hers.

Performances of Terrence McNally’s “Master Class” continue through Sunday, July 21, with matinees on Wednesdays and Sundays and talkbacks on Tuesdays. Rounding out the production’s staff is scenic designer Rachel Hauck, costume designer Laura Bauer, lighting designer Jen Schriever, sound designer Sun Hee Kil, projection designer Yee Eun Nam and production stage manager Melissa Sparks. In addition to his role as the piano accompanist, Brett Ryback is also the show’s music director. Tickets start at $50 at baystreet.org or 631-725-9500. Bay Street Theater is on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.