Master Class was a resounding commercial success. It ran from November 1995 to June 1997 on Broadway, recording over six hundred performances. By 1997, there also had been about forty productions abroad, including those in Argentina, Estonia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Turkey.

Zoe Caldwell received high praise for her performance as Callas, whom she played from opening night until June 28, 1996, and for which she won a Tony Award. Brad Leithauser, in Time, wrote that "you don't doubt that if [Caldwell] could only transfer what's inside her to her pupils, they would sing like angels." However, Caldwell's strong performance tended to obscure, according to Leithauser, the shortcomings of the play. He questioned the division of the play into two acts, since "the second act doesn't deepen, it merely extends." He also declared that McNally's attempt to "drive [the play] toward an old-fashioned theatrical climax (one...