La Divina: The Last Interview of Maria Callas

Shelley has a gorgeous operatic voice and a command of the stage. She really embodies Maria Callas so beautifully and accurately. And, yet, she's not mimicking and she's really making Callas her own. As a huge Maria Callas fan and a lover of opera, I really commend the care and work that was put into this play. ... full review

An AMAZING character portrayal. Shelley is an amazing actor with incredible operatic skills, wit, and storytelling abilities. I would highly recommend this show to others! It's not easy to keep attention as a one woman show, but she did it very very well.... full review

I can see why "La Divina" was chosen as a "Pick of the Fringe" in the 2021 Hollywood Fringe Festival! This show is absolutely exquisite.... full review

This show has an immediate "wow" factor that carries throughout the show. Without knowing anything about Maria Callas, I feel like a got a true sense of who she is using an interview format that smartly uses pauses and interruptions to her advantage. And then the singing...bellissima. She could easily perform in any opera house around the world. One of the best, if not THE best, show I've seen at this year's Fringe.... full review

Shelley is a fantastic performer who fills the room with her powerhouse vocals and nuanced characteristics of Maria Callas. Kali douleia (great work)!... full review

You don’t need to be an opera aficionado to be blown away by this powerful portrayal of a legendary artist.... full review

Very compelling one person play about a prima Donna opera singer telling her story to a reporter. ... full review

Shelley Cooper's sublime soprano soars to fill this cozy venue at least a dozen times (and could certainly fill much larger ones) as she recreates a late-in-life interview with the PRIMA-donna Maria Callas. She doesn't look like MC, but with a basic black dress and two strands of pearls---and That Voice!---she compels belief for 45 minutes (if she edited the pauses for unheard moderator questions it would be 40 or less). Even opera-phobes (like me) will be stunned and (like me) learn a lot of MC's previously-hidden early history. Thanks, Shelley, for a wonderful, too-brief theatrical evening! ... full review

Interpreting Maria Callas it's an ambitious and dangerous move. I was worried... Shelley Cooper stepped up on the stage and I understood that "La Divina" was in good hands. Shelley Cooper is a real "Prima Donna". Elegant, powerful, precise and incredibly talented. As a melo maniac and as Italian I enjoyed fully all the Arias proposed by Shelley. I sang with her, hiding under my mask ,and as an Italian soldier told to a young Maria Callas, after she sang one of the most famous arias from " Il barbiere di Siviglia", I felt at home for a moment. ... full review

Shelley Cooper... TERRIFIC Talent. Training. Timing. Tight writing, glorious arias. Direction by Mariangela Chatzistamatiou was spot on. ... full review