“And I became real good friends with von Karajan,” Leonard Bernstein wrote to his wife, Felicia, in a letter from Switzerland in 1954, “whom you would (and will) adore. My first Nazi.” In 1956, Karajan was appointed principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1958, Bernstein would get sole directorship of the New York Philharmonic. Both became towering figures in classical music as well as apex rivals with wavy white hair, though Bernstein’s wingspan included his gifts as a composer. It is a fact that the two met by chance in Vienna, at the Sacher Hotel, in April 1989. Karajan died later that year; Bernstein, in 1990. The playwright Peter Danish, who wrote Last Call, learned of the meeting from a waiter in the hotel. It was the night, he was told, before Karajan’s last performances with the Vienna Philharmonic, and the maestros had a drink in the Blaue Bar. Danish’s play is inspired by that meeting. And instead of casting two men, the actresses Helen Schneider and Lucca Züchner play Bernstein and Karajan. The idea was director Gil Mehmert’s, and as Danish says, “They elevated it to heights I couldn’t have expected.” —Laura Jacobs