FAME, FORTUNE AND glory. These values are presented to the world as pinnacles or measures for success, and they’re understood by the common folk to be extra specially good if you’ve achieved them and you’re a creative person who can be on stage, armed with all of these treasures. Playwright and director Janna Ramos-Violante has taken this idea and splayed it open in clear yet universal speculation on the life of one of the world’s greats: Maria Callas. The Opera Singer is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 28 March 2026.

Curiously, we know she is Callas – performed by Fiona Ramsay – by her presence, and the couple of notes performed with great subtlety pre-empting her voice. The voice is not part of the work, however. It is the presence. And this is brought to life by an interview with the media. Cringingly difficult at times, it presents a journalist with a dream – Theo Harrington (played by Owain Rhys Davies) – to interview The Flame, Callas. She’s in her Parisian boudoir. He’s nervous as hell. It’s a career break for him. An obligation for her.

But then what happens, scriptwise and in terms of the two performers interacting, is something extraordinary. The prying questions are tossed hither and yon, with no holds barred. Spite and malice and open curiosity are exposed, as is a profound sense of failure that we all confront in looking at roads not crossed in one’s life’s decisions. Ramsay is utterly formidable in this role, which brings out an immense yet delicate sense of nobility coupled with an almost crippling vulnerability which is all hidden beneath the tight facade. With an extraordinary profile rendered regal and indomitable with a wig which is so powerful, it deserves its own credit, Ramsay paints a Callas who is fearless, cruel and funny but irrepressibly human.

You come away with a sense of immensity in both the story being portrayed and the performance itself. Like so many artists who have given their all to their discipline and left this mortal coil young, exhausted and broken, Callas’s story demonstrates the hugeness of a career that chooses you. And it is far from a golden childhood portrayed. The blood, sweat and tears of honing one’s talent to an infinitely sharpened blade are spent, and the result? A seismic shift in one’s ability to be human. A deep loneliness. A broken body and soul. A sense of personal failure. She died of heart failure at the age of 53.

The device of tiptoeing in to who Callas was without too much detail, without recordings of her voice, without specificity, is very powerful. The wig and the presence say it all. The message is universal. Tragic. Beautiful. These giants are sacrificed at the alter of the ordinary folk who want to be in the audience and have the privilege to listen, to put the one touched by the gods under the proverbial microscope, and look at them, until we can no longer see them.

One strange theatrical decision which reflects with anomaly on the whole play, however, is the music played at the end of the work. Nina Simone is a completely different entity – different music, different story, different life – and her rich voice concatenates strangely with the story just performed.

The Opera Singer presents a nuanced and beautifully performed understanding of the complex difficult and oft betrayed position of art in our world. If it’s there in your belly and you listen to its imperatives, it will eat you up alive, but create a flame that keeps others warm. Forever.

• The Opera Singer is written, directed and designed by Janna Ramos-Violante and co-produced by Tony Flack, Troupe Theatre Company and Theatre on the Square. It features creative input by Vera Alimanova (wig) and is performed by Owain Rhys Davies and Fiona Ramsay. It is stage managed by Regina Dube with technical management by Loftus Mohale and Reggie Mathebe assisted by Nhlanhla Zungu and production assistant Za Mvubelo, and is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 28 March 2026.