The soprano

Trinity Rep stages Maria Callas's Master Class

by Bill Rodrgiguez

Brian McEleney couldn't be more of a natural to direct Master Class at Trinity if he were Maria Callas's love child with Aristotle Onassis. He's had plenty of experience teaching actors, so the back-and-forth with Callas and student singers in the play is a familiar dynamic. He is a long-time opera fan, in attendance at the Met when he lived in New York and not one to miss the original performance there by Zoe Caldwell, for whom the play was written.

As an actor McEleney, 46, is such a mainstay at Trinity Repertory Company that one tends to forget he originally signed on to teach at its conservatory, which he now co-directs with Stephen Berenson. Before coming to Providence, he was on the faculty of Princeton University for nine years. As an actor he has impressed audiences with his range. When he was rehearsing his droll Malvolio in Twelfth Night, I recall his putting fellow actors -- who had seen the performance countless times -- into paroxysms of laughter. In the other direction, his Prior Walter, dying of AIDS in Angels In America, was a moving depiction of anguish and dignity.

Terrence McNally's paean to "La Divina," the diva who changed the direction of 20th-century operatic interpretations, will be performed in the intimate downstairs theater May 7 through June 20, with Barbara Meek as Callas.

"What's great about the play is that the lessons are incredibly specific and entertaining and revelatory if you know nothing about opera," says McEleney, speaking in the Trinity archives room before a rehearsal. "If you do know about opera, they work on a whole other level. And if you know a lot about Callas, they work on a whole other other level."

Callas was widely regarded as the greatest soprano of the century. As a coloratura, a soprano practiced in ornamental vocal trills and runs, she was impressive. But more importantly for the future of opera, she single-handedly resurrected bel canto, the 17th-19th century operatic tradition that emphasized tonal lyricism and bravura vocal technique. Callas brought back the obligation, and audience expectation, for divas to act as convincingly as they could sing. She introduced this style of emotional honesty and depth even to operas that were not part of the bel canto tradition. It's no wonder that her admirers among opera lovers are passionate in their appreciation.

"By diva-fying those people, we're on some level saying this is what we want life to be," the director says. "We want humans to struggle and strive and be the greatest that they can. To see somebody do something unbelievably difficult, like she did, unbelievably personal, unbelievably costly."

Callas lived life as dramatically as she performed larger-than-life operatic melodramas. There were stormy relationships with managers and others in the opera world, the product of her sometimes imperious attempts to keep the art pure. Off-stage, for all the world to see in the tabloids, was both her affair with the then-married Aristotle Onassis and her eventual dethronement by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Master Class earned a Tony Award for Best Play in 1996. It is a fictionalized presentation of master classes that Callas gave at the Juilliard School in 1971-72, six years after her last public performance, at age 42, and five years before her death. Playwright McNally audited those classes, but he makes no attempt to document the actual sessions, which were recorded and are available on CD.

McEleney says he has seen documentaries -- the four-hour cable series on Elizabeth Taylor came to mind -- that has diminished performers to the point of making them "just more pedestrian." He admires how McNally refused to give us the illusion that we could fully understand Callas. "We can never really grasp the totality and complexity of human spirit. It's a phenomenal thing in this play, that we spend two hours in a very intimate way with her, and she seems larger than she did when we started."

With the play, McNally took the master classes and amplified the idealism and passion of Callas to give us a portrait that, in its fictions, is truer to her spirit.

"Maria Callas on the CD is a much better teacher than she is in the play," McEleney says. "She's much less self-involved. She's much more generous. She's much more -- slightly more -- involved in the actual minutia of making sound and making language and singing, the craft."

An important advantage McEleney had in directing this production is his long working relationship with Trinity veteran Barbara Meek, who plays Callas. Master Class is Meek's 80th production with the company. Kudos during her long career includes an Outer Critics Circle Award, from Boston, for her portrayal of Bessie Delany in Trinity Rep's production of Having Our Say.

"She's been very heroic about bringing herself to this in a very naked and generous way that I wouldn't say surprised me -- she's done it before -- but I think she's bringing parts of herself to this play that I've never seen before," McEleney observes.

McEleney previously directed Measure for Measure and A Christmas Carol with the company. In the Trinity collaborative tradition, he wasn't about to come to rehearsal on this occasion with marching orders for Meek to approach her character.

"We had to find together how she could bring all the facets of herself to this role. Which is ultimately all that's required, because that's what Callas did," he says. "Barbara knows a lot about being an artist, about what it costs to be an artist, about what to give to be an artist, about how hard it is, about how glamorous it is, about how fun it is, about attention to detail."

The director did insist upon one matter. In prior productions featuring performers from Patti Lupone to Faye Dunaway (who has the film rights), the actress has provided the voice of Aristotle Onassis and others in the flashback reveries. McEleney discussed the matter with the playwright, who wanted it done as in other productions. But McEleney felt strongly that we and the actress should hear other actors's voices, to maintain Callas's point of view, so that is how the scenes will be performed.

The director is also concerned about another matter previous stagings handled differently. In some productions the three students were left undeveloped, used as props more than as actors. McEleney auditioned 20 local singer-actors before selecting sopranos Melissa D'Amico and Shana Harvey and tenor Fredric Scheff. Although they are all trained opera singers, he chose them for their acting abilities.

"I've worked very hard to find the journey of each lesson, where it starts, where it gets to, where she gets the students to," he says.

So the Providence production of Master Class and its Maria Callas should have a distinctive personality, compared to its previous incarnations.

"McNally is asking us: What does it mean to be an artist of that caliber? What does it take? What does it cost? Why do we want to have heroic figures like that, either in art or sports or politics? What do they mean to us? What does it cost them to be that to us?" the director enumerated.

Trinity Rep audiences will have many enjoyable opportunities to find out.