Passion premiered on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre on May 9, 1994, with book by James Lapine, based on Ettore Scola’s 1981 film Passione d’Amore (itself based on Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s 1869 novel Fosca). The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical despite running only 280 performances — one of the shortest-running Best Musical winners in history.
Captain Giorgio Bachetti is stationed at a remote Italian garrison in 1863. He has a beautiful mistress, Clara, in Milan — their love is perfect, reciprocal, and doomed by distance. At the garrison, his colonel’s cousin Fosca — desperately ill, physically repulsive, emotionally unstable — falls obsessively in love with Giorgio. He rejects her; she does not stop. She writes letters, follows him, collapses in his presence, and refuses to accept that love unreturned is love wasted.
The show’s scandal was its conclusion: Giorgio leaves Clara and comes to love Fosca — not despite her ugliness and obsession but because of the totality of her devotion. Sondheim’s score (through-composed, almost entirely sung) makes this psychologically credible: Fosca’s music is so intense, so devoid of self-protection, that it overwhelms the prettier, safer music of Clara and Giorgio’s conventional love.
Collecting Passion
Original cast recording (Angel Records, 1994): CD.
Market values:
- Original cast CD, sealed: $15–$40
- Published script (TCG), signed by Sondheim: $100–$300