Class act

My first glimpse of Maria Callas was at Carnegie Hall. But she had already stopped performing and was just a member of the audience, though she was sitting in the equivalent of the royal box. I had by then already deeply regretted that I had never seen her in a complete opera. So when in the fall of 1971 it was announced that she'd be teaching a series of master classes at the Juilliard School and that the public was welcome (for $5!), I knew I'd have to go down to New York.

I got to two classes and still have the notes I took, though they're sadly skimpier than I remembered. EMI's set of excerpts from these classes is a fascinating but frustrating enterprise, with the arias misguidedly arranged in chronological order, by composer, and too many familiar Callas recordings taking space away from the lessons themselves, though the recordings are marvelous. And the students -- several of whom went on to have substantial careers -- are not always particularly responsive.

The procedure was simple: a student came on stage and sang an aria, accompanied by pianist Eugene Kohn, while Callas listened from a stool with a little card table for her score. Then she'd ask the student to begin again, only this time she felt free to interrupt. She commented on the subtlest issues of style and meaning. She talked about rhythm, dynamics, ornamentation, pronunciation, where to breathe. She insisted on absolute fidelity to the score. She compared singing Italian with singing French. She even offered advice about what to wear to auditions. The one time she loses patience is when a student interpolates a florid cadenza into a comic aria from The Barber of Seville. "Are you after expression, or are you after fireworks?" she asks.

The most riveting lesson I heard -- and it's included on these discs -- was Callas working with a young baritone on Rigoletto's aria "Cortigiani, vil razza dannata" ("Courtiers, you cowardly and damned race"). Rigoletto, the Duke of Mantua's court jester, sings it when he discovers that his daughter has been abducted by the very noblemen he's been ridiculing mercilessly. He can barely contain his anger even as he abjectly begs them to take pity on him. Callas tells the student to sing the notes, but to forget about his voice. "Be like an animal when you sing this aria. This would be my version. I think that this should be a real animal that's trying to dominate himself. He's hating being obliged to beg them. Because it's his own daughter, so he's fiercely savage. . . . You're crying, but you hate the idea, eh?" Then she tears into the aria (which at this point in her career fit right into her vocal range) with an uncanny mixture of ferocity and almost unbearable pathos.

Callas, of course, never sang Rigoletto, or any baritone part. But these few moments are electrifying. "Who'd have thought the world's greatest Rigoletto would be a woman?" someone remarked after the class. She was too serious an artist ever to do anything as bizarre as record an album of baritone arias, but I bet everyone present at Juilliard that day wished she would. She obviously identified with the way the hunchbacked jester had to overcome impediments of appearance and temperament. Years before, she lost more than 60 pounds to transform herself from an overstuffed prima donna into a convincing and mercurial actress. She lightened the natural heaviness of her voice to create an instrument of phenomenal technical --and dramatic -- flexibility. She even turned her increasing vocal problems into a means of even-more-nuanced expression. All this while she was playing to an audience that was often more interested in the melodrama of her life than in her real artistic achievements. Why shouldn't she "be" Rigoletto as easily as she became Carmen or Violetta?

But these classes never turn into a showcase for herself. Callas never forgets she's there to teach. She interrupts her own singing mid phrase to make a point. And despite her obvious frustration when some of these students seem dense or unprepared, she's remarkably patient. She makes them do what she tells them over and over until they get it right. She seems resigned to the idea that they'll never comprehend the deepest message or mystery of her art. Yet who could blame them when it's probably something she herself never completely understood?