Master class

Master Class is a 1995 play by American playwright Terrence McNally, presented as a fictional master class by opera singer Maria Callas near the end of her life, in the 1970s. The play features incidental vocal music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini. The play opened on Broadway in 1995, with stars Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald winning Tony Awards.

-born painter Marcel Janco (far left) in Ein Hod, Israel, 1964¹]] A master class is a class given to students of a particular discipline by an expert of that discipline—usually music, but also science, painting, drama, games, or on any other occasion where skills are being developed. "Masterclass" is also used in a figurative sense to describe a display of great skill in a context where education was not the primary intention; e.g., "his last few laps were a masterclass in overtaking" (referencing a race around a track). ==History== In 1884, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, delivered twenty lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light. In their 1987 book Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics: historical and philosophical perspectives, Robert Kargon and Peter Achinstein write that the sessions, which were held in a small lecture hall, were conducted as "master classes". The tone was conversational and informal; Kelvin made almost no use of notes ... Usually Kelvin lectured from one of these standpoints, then engaged the audience in a discussion of the details, then shifted to another of the standpoints for the second part of the lecture. They explain: The attendees were expected to have advanced knowledge of physics and mathematics. Among them were British physicists Lord Rayleigh and George Forbes; Professors Kikuchi and Fujioka of Japan; American instructors in physics from eastern and western colleges, including Albert Michelson and Edward Morley; attendees from Canada, Germany, and Russia; and Hopkins faculty and students including Rowland, Thomas Craig, Fabian Franklin, Henry Crew, Gustav Liebig, Joseph Sweetman Ames, and Christine Ladd Franklin. A record of the twenty classes was made by A. S. Hathaway and circulated afterwards using papyrograph stencil duplication. It is these notes that were reproduced in 1987 for the publication sponsored by Johns Hopkins Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. In fact Hathaway continued to correspond with Kelvin, who supplemented the notes, and the "Lectures" were eventually broadly circulated in 1904. ==See also== Clinic (music) Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Berlin (holds master classes in conducting) ==References==

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