Master Class

Master Class is a play by American playwright Terrence McNally, with incidental music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini. The play originally was staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Mark Taper Forum. After twelve previews, the Broadway production, directed by Leonard Foglia, opened on November 15, 1995 at the John Golden Theatre, where it ran for 598 performances. The original cast included Zoe Caldwell, Audra McDonald, Karen Kay Cody, David Loud, and Jay Hunter Morris. Caldwell and McDonald won Tony Awards for their performances in 1996.

At its core is the diva Maria Callas, a glamorous, commanding, larger-than-life, caustic, and surprisingly drop-dead funny pedagogue holding a voice 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.

Performance history in South Africa

Presented by the Baxter Theatre and The Company of Four, December 1984. Directed by Leonard Schach, design by John Caviggia, starring Michael Atkinson as Josef Stalin, the British actor Jonathan Sharp as Shostakovich, Don Maguire and David Alcock.

Presented by Pieter Toerien at the National Arts Festival, 1996, by arrangement with Robert Whitehead and Lewis Allen, starring Jana Cilliers as Maria Callas. Others in the cast were Tony Bentel, Gina Schmukler, Anthony Coleman, Jocelyn Broderick, Pierre du Toit. Directed by Mark Graham.