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Solving Maria Callas

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Val Robichaud


It’s hard to overestimate the fame, prowess, and influence of singer Maria Callas, who dominated the great opera houses – and tabloid headlines – in the fifties and sixties. She was, dramatically and magnificently, a true Diva. 

So how does Libby Oberlin, an actress that doesn’t sing and has never had an affair with a Greek millionaire, assume that character?

Oberlin did lots of research, reading bios, watching videos and listening to Callas recordings, some from the pivot Juilliard sessions themselves, in which Callas reveals herself as much as her techniques. She was captivated. “Such a complex woman. A commanding force. I fell in love with her.”

“I listen to her speaking voice and her operas. I also find it very important to move my body in character. To walk around the space as she would walk, sit in her seat in the way that I’ve decided she sits.” 

It’s an intense role, she says. The character is at times chatty, serious, wistful, reflective, cynical, demanding, witty, a bit bitchy – a full emotional arpeggio worthy of the woman they called La Divina. 

“If I have stepped on some people at times because I am at the top, it couldn’t be helped,” Callas once famously said, perhaps at The Met or on the Onassis yacht. “What should I do if someone gets hurt… retire?”

Master Class is based on classes given by Callas at The Juilliard School in 1971. It was several years since she had last performed, and her voice had gone. Even the gossip headlines had begun to fade. But the Diva thing? You never lose that.

The play finds Callas instructing three vocal students (Robbie Dornaus, Emily Evans, and Morgan Harrington). Oberlin herself does not sing in the play, but says the three actors each have a well-known aria that leaves her “awestruck. Just gorgeous singing.”

John Partridge plays her pianist and Dan Monez rounds out the cast as Juilliard’s stagehand. Playwright McNally based this play on real-life sessions, from recordings done at the time.

Oberlin says she’s most excited to convey the woman behind the superstar façade. “Maria’s unsurpassed work ethic, her wicked sense of humor, and all-consuming passion for the arts, and the complexities and hardships she faced as a child, all color the woman who would become La Divina.”

Oberlin is the founder and artistic director of The Theater School, which is on a pandemic-forced hiatus. She chose not to convert to an online business, she says. Performances and classes, and certainly her summer camps, just wouldn’t work that way, not for her. So, after 14 years of teaching, she had “a bit of an identity crisis. I realized how much I missed acting, and decided to flip the switch a little bit” with a return to acting. “I never gave it a full shot.”

Last year she took a part in a San Francisco production, then jumped at SAL’s Jaime Love offer to play the lead in Master Class and work with director Carl Jordan. Obelin says that one layer of the Callas script stresses the value of arts and performing, a message that really resonates. “It’s very timely. We’ve all missed it so much.”

As for the school, there could be an eventual curtain call. She hopes that with the trust she has built with her “theater families, that they’ll welcome me back when it feels right.”

Sonoma Arts Live presents Master Class, written by Terrence McNally and directed by Carl Jordan. Friday, February 11 through 27, with a total of 11 performances. Rotary Stage in Andrews Hall, Sonoma Community Center, 276 East Napa Street, Sonoma. Sonomaartslive.org. 

Cover photo by Miller Oberlin

 




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