Putting In the Poetry

The props are simple: desk, music stand, stool, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses used occasionally as a baton. The cast is small: one piano accompanist, plus any of 25 young, nervous operatic hopefuls selected from a field of 300 applicants. The star and plot line are fantastic: Maria Callas, in a generous sampling of the secrets that made her one of the great singer-actresses of the 20th century.

This is the scene in La Callas' twice-weekly master classes at Manhattan's Juilliard School, the second series of which opened last week. As musical shows go, it is already one of the long runners. It is also one of the best. The audience thronging the school's 1,000-seat opera theater is as glittering as on any opening night at the Met. Besides students and opera buffs, it includes leading critics, top performers like Tenor Placido Domingo and Pianist Alexis Weissenberg, theatrical luminaries like Lillian Gish and Ben Gazzara, even an old nemesis, Sir Rudolf Bing.

No Doubt. Callas at 48, chic in pantsuit or flowing, ankle-length skirt, does not merely walk out on the stage, she takes possession of it, just as she did during her last public performances in 1965 (Tosca at the Met and Covent Garden). With each student, she proceeds as she did last week with Korean Soprano Kyu Do Park. She let her sing all of Mi chiamano Mimi (They call me Mimi) from La Boheme, then went to work, singing phrases back to show how to put meaning into them. When Callas came to the word "Mimi," her rich, smoky voice swelled with emotion. "Have no doubt about who you are," she explained.

To be sure that none of the students has any doubt, she stresses, "I don't want you ever to imitate me. I just want you to come to your own interpretation after understanding what is in the score." Molding phrases with her long, expressive hands, she seems to be physically drawing something out of the students, getting them to make the most of it. "Vibrate," she exhorts. "Vibrate like a violin." To a tentative singer she says: "Don't be overcautious. And please don't look down. Lift up your head. You can do it." After the singer tries again, Callas may say: "You are still too cautious on the high note. Whatever you have, out! Eh?" If her severity wounds a student, sometimes it is for the best. "There! You're looking at me and you're suffering. That's what I want in the aria."

Acting with the voice is a theme that runs through her talk like a Wagnerian leitmotif'. After listening to a coloratura sing Caro Nome from Rigoletto, Callas remarked: "Give it more freedom. You have to be a girl who is passionately in love. True, Gilda is still a virgin, but one should not be too cutesy, because of what happens to her later. Don't forget, she sacrifices her life for love."

No Excuse. Callas' teaching also takes in the more mundane details of performing. She often circles a singer, correcting posture and bearing. "You have a wonderful, wonderful figure," she told blushing Basso John Seabury last week. "Give it to the public." As for the semaphore signals that many youngsters--and not a few veterans --mistake for dramatic gestures, she admonishes: "Don't move your hands so much. A movement must have meaning; otherwise, please just stand still. You can stand still and you can act, as long as the stillness has an intensity, an aliveness."

Between sessions, Callas relaxed in her suite at the Plaza Hotel and summed up for TIME'S Rosemarie Tau-ris what she hopes to achieve in her classes: "I try to impart to the students things that came to me naturally, and that may not be natural to others. To be an opera singer you have to be an actor or an actress. You have to be a good musician. You have to look well onstage and off. There is no excuse for being 30 Ibs. overweight. And you must have nerve. I tell my students to think. Before they sing a phrase they must have the expression--the thought behind the music--on their faces, so the public will see it first. I tell them to put more poetry into their voices. I try to teach them humbleness toward music." The kind of humbleness, in other words, that they can be proud of.

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