STAGECRAFT

Amanda Muggleton transforms into famously feisty opera singer Maria Callas

She describes herself as “an absolute mouse” but says she transforms into a tiger on stage to play the world’s most famous opera singer and tigress Maria Callas. Actor Amanda Muggleton heads to Hobart this week to bring to life her favourite role in Terrence McNally’s comedic Master Class.

“She was very feisty and volatile,” Muggleton says. “They say she used to throw tantrums.”

The play is set near the end of Callas’s life in the early 1970s after Callas, by then all but a recluse, accepted some limited teaching roles at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. In this immersive theatrical tribute, the audience becomes her young vocal students as Callas shares her experiences and life lessons with them.

“I don’t grab anyone out of the audience. I won’t put you on the spot,” Muggleton says.

“But it’s immersive theatre and that’s the excitement of it. A lot of what I say in the play is verbatim.”

Muggleton is on stage for the entire two-hour show. “It’s through her teaching that you hear her life story, which is a total Greek tragedy because one minute I’m making you cry and the next, I’m making you laugh because she’s so inappropriate. She’s so uncaring to the students. Callas was a nightmare and that’s where the comedy comes in. And of course, she is a bully on stage.”

Callas was herself bullied in her lifetime, firstly by her mother, who told her repeatedly that she was fat and ugly and couldn’t sing, and later by her husbands and many of her male theatre bosses. It’s something Muggleton can relate to.

“I’ve been bullied recently,” she says. “I feel very, very sad for people who are bullied. I was a babbling mess. It affects everyone. It’s very diminishing. You feel helpless. And I tried to deal with it and I couldn’t. You feel redundant. I wasn’t given any help. I was at a total loss.”

She describes Callas as a woman and a half and says playing her is draining.

“They talk about BC and AC – before Callas and after Callas – because she turned the opera world upside down. In a time when opera singers were planting their feet on stage like tree idiots and afraid to fart for fear of wobbling their voices, Callas was running across the stage or throwing herself on the floor or sitting down and singing — which nobody did at the time. She thought what’s the point of telling this amazing story if you are just doing it with music and not your whole face and your body and your whole being and whole feeling.”

Muggleton first played Callas in 1999, and won both Helpmann and Green Room awards for her portrayal in 2002. She is thrilled by the reception to Master Class in Melbourne.

“It’s gone fantastically well,” she says. “We’ve extended and we’re getting standing ovations every night. It’s one of the funniest and rewarding nights of theatre. I think the one thing we’ve got to say is that this is not about opera because I think that can put a lot of people off.”

Master Class will be staged for three nights only at Hobart’s Theatre Royal this Wednesday, February 28; Thursday, March 1; and Friday, March 2 at 7.30pm. It is suitable for all ages. Tickets from $42. Visit theatreroyal.com.au/shows/master-class