McNally's play Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994) arose from McNally's desire to write about what it was like to be a gay man in America in the 1990s. The play received laudatory reviews and won several awards, including a Tony Award for best play.

Greek Fire: The Story of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis (2001), by Nicholas Gage, sympathetically documents the tempestuous nine-year affair between Callas and the Greek shipping tycoon. Relevant for students of Master Class is Gage's claim that Callas gave birth to Onassis's son in 1960 and that the baby died within hours.

Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography (2001), by Anne Edwards, is the latest of more than thirty biographies of Callas. Edwards is at pains to search for the facts behind all the myths about Callas, and she produces evidence to refute Gage's assertion in Greek Fire that Callas had a...