Quick Review: Master Class

When Philippine Opera Company first staged Terrence McNally’s Master Class in 2010 with Cheri Gil as Maria Callas, I missed it. So when POC mounted the Tony Award-winning play with Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo as La Divina, I said to myself that if I missed this one, I am sure to regret it. So I saw it on its premiere at the RCBC Plaza and was I in for a roller-coaster ride, witnessing the highs and lows of the legendary soprano as masterfully portrayed by Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo.

 

Maria Callas is a complex character. She was one of a kind. A dramatic soprano with the range and agility of a coloratura, she almost single-handedly brought back the bel canto repertoire — Bellini's Norma, Donizetti's Lucia, Cherubini's Medea. Bernstein called her The Bible of Opera. But the woman behind the voice never felt enough. Her mother called her the fat, ugly, talented one. The Italian press said the same about her weight. She lost 80 lbs in a year, remade herself for Onassis, and still got left for Jackie Kennedy. The voice that filled La Scala couldn't fill whatever was missing inside.

 

All these things we learn as McNally skilfully structured the play where the master class itself is mostly a pretext. Callas is supposed to be teaching, but every correction turns into a memory. Tells Sophie de Palma (Alexandra Bernas) she needs a look. Tells Sharon Graham (Angeli Benipayo) how she sang Medea at La Scala. The advice is an autobiography in disguise.

 

Twice the stage shifts, and Callas drops out of the classroom completely. Act One she relives her La Scala debut, her mother, and the press on her weight. Act Two she's on Onassis's yacht and shrinking to keep him. The monologue ends, she snaps back mid-sentence, and the bewildered student is still waiting for a note. We learn about her because she cannot stop talking about it.

 

Master Class is a one-woman tour de force with supporting singers, a role that would collapse in lesser hands. Lauchengco-Yulo has exactly the stature it demands. She is on stage the whole evening, carrying the play on her back, from the accent that lands somewhere between American and Italian to the gestures themselves.

 

The set is bare. A piano, a chair, a music stand, a glass of water. McNally wrote the play that way, and POC honours it. When Callas slips into La Scala or onto Onassis's yacht, nothing on stage moves. The lights shift, her voice shifts, and you do the rest of the work. The empty stage is the point. The diva fills it.

 

In the class, Callas is pedantic. Every breath corrected, every vowel shaped, every aria cut off before the singer is ready. Then a memory pulls her back to La Scala and the diva surfaces. The gestures open up, the voice fills the theatre again, even decades after the real voice is gone. Then another memory drops her onto Onassis's yacht and she shrinks. She sits. She folds. She lets him be cruel. The pedant and the diva are both gone. What is left is the woman who was always the fat, ugly, talented one. Lauchengco-Yulo lets you see the move between all three, That is the whole performance, and you cannot look away from it.

 

And because this is POC, we are treated to real excerpts from three operas. Sophie attempts Bellini's La Sonnambula. Tony Candolino (Arman Ferrer) takes on Puccini's Tosca. Sharon delivers Lady Macbeth's entrance aria from Verdi. Three operas, three chapters of Callas's own career. Bernas, Ferrer, and Benipayo sing them with voices and stage presence to spare, good enough that for a moment you forget the play is about someone else.

 

The last time I saw Ferrer on stage was as Beadle Bamford in Atlantis Productions’ Sweeney Todd in 2019. Seeing him here, sailing through Recondita armonia and holding his own against Lauchengco-Yulo's Callas.

 

Bernas plays Sophie so earnestly that Callas's cruelty lands twice as hard, once on the student and once on you. Benipayo gives Sharon a comic edge before Lady Macbeth's entrance aria arrives, and then she sings the thing with the steel the role demands.

 

All this singing was held together by Louie Angelo Oca on piano as Manny Weinstock, Callas's long-suffering accompanist. The role is a thankless one. Callas barely uses his name, talks past him, snaps when he plays a phrase she did not ask for. Oca plays it straight and lets the cruelty land, then quietly carries every aria the students attempt. The accompanist holds the master class together. Oca holds the production together.

 

Then there’s the Stagehand who drifts in and out with footstools, cushions, a glass of water, every time Callas snaps her fingers. Jaime del Mundo plays him, which is the production's quiet joke. The director casts himself as the silent functionary. He says almost nothing all evening and gets bossed around by his own leading lady.

 

Overall, this is what Master Class needs. A diva role with a diva to play it. Singers who can sing. A director who steps out of the way. POC put the right people in the right room, and Lauchengco-Yulo did the rest.

 

Kudos to Director Jaime del Mundo, Karla Gutierrez, and the entire POC Team for a phenomenal production.

Master Class runs until May 30 at the Carlos P Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati City.