More info on the new Sondheim and David Ives musical (UPDATE, 2018) — Page 3

"I don't understand why everyone finds the ending of Passion so unbelievable. He learns to love Fosca because her love is so powerful that he realizes that love is more than just beauty. The moral of Passion is that true love isn't physical, it's emotional.

I'm sorry to continue the derailing of this thread, but that is not at all what Passion is about. Giorgio "falls in love" with Fosca in the end because he is unstable and emotionally dependent, and, as we might say in modern day "on the rebound." He goes to her right after he breaks up with Clara, and thinks that he loves her because she is the only emotional support for him. Also, Fosca is not just ugly, she is pretty psychologically twisted and really not a very good person. The good things she does in the play are only because she is obsessed with Giorgio. Passion is absolutely not a "Beauty and the Beast" story, about the value of inner beauty. It's about the twisted nature of obsession, jealousy and emotional and physical dependance, as well as the effects of physical and mental illness on people's behavior.

^ Accurate.

More evidence that icecreambenjamin is an idiot, as if we needed any more.

"As Fosca started to speak and the camera cut back to her, I had my epiphany. I realized that the story was not about how she is going to fall in love with him, but about how he is going to fall in love with her . . . at the same time thinking, "They're never going to convince me of that, they're never going to pull that off," all the while knowing they would, that Scola wouldn't have taken on such a ripely melodramatic story unless he was convinced that he could make it plausible. By the end of the movie, the unwritten songs in my head were brimming and I was certain of two things. First, I wanted to make it into a musical, the problem being that it couldn't be a musical, not even in my nontraditional style, because the characters were so outsized. Second, I wanted James Lapine to write it; he was a romantic, he had a feel for different centuries and different cultures, and he was enthusiastically attracted to weirdness...

Fulfilled by James's theatrically inventive staging, the piece worked for me, but certainly not for everyone. As the hostility during previews indicated, the story struck some audiences as ridiculous. They refused to believe that anyone, much less the handsome Giorgio, could come to love someone so manipulative and relentless, not to mention physically repellent, as Fosca. As the perennial banality would have it, they couldn't "identify" with the main characters. The violence of their reaction, however, strikes me as an example of "The lady doth protest too much." I think they may have identified with Giorgio and Fosca all too readily and uncomfortably. The idea of a love that's pure, that burns with D. H. Lawrence's gemlike flame, emanating from a source so gnarled and selfish, is hard to accept. Perhaps they were reacting to the realization that we are all Fosca, we are all Giorgio, we are all Clara. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is what gives Tarchetti's stodgy novel and Scola's elegant movie such profound power."

- Stephen Sondheim, "Look, I Made A Hat"

While I understand that Giorgio is unstable and Fosca is, in a way, his rebound girl, he's let his whole life fall apart due to her. He could've ignored Fosca all together, but instead, there's something about her that is eating away at him. Fosca is obsessive and crazy, but she still loves him more than Clara did and I believe that Giorgio realizes that at the end.

Did the fact that Giorgio was sad and heartbroken, help to get him into Fosca's bed? Yeah, probably, but Fosca is not a bad person. She had a final wish and that was for someone to love her. Giorgio truly falls in love with her because she's the nearest source of love after losing Clara. I wouldn't say that he loves *Fosca*, but rather the love she provides.

Fantod, when we discuss things, please refrain from being unpleasant. I did not insult you, so please don't insult me. We have different opinions, that does not make me an "idiot."

I'm really curious about what tone they'll be taking on this, and if Ives's past work is any indication we'll be seeing a return to Sondheim's Brecht mode.

You need a a square root, baby.

Not to re-derail the thread or anything, but can any of the knowledgeable posters here advise whereabouts it was that Sondheim was quoted as saying that Fosca's song 'Loving You' in 'Passion' is meant to be the moment we start to sympathise with her as a character? I swear I read or heard him say that somewhere but haven't been able to find it since. I was amazed at his comment because that song of self-justfying stalkerism was the moment that turned me definitively against the character.

As you might have guessed, I do not like 'Passion', but if I believed the show was intended to be about 'none-too-bright narcissist succumbs to manipulative stalker' (rather than just unintentionally being about it) then the show might actually become more palatable. But Sondheim's comment made me think that he believes the show is about a somewhat-laudable love.

It MIGHT be on the DVD commentary, if I recall correctly too.

I also don't know if I agree with the interpretation that the point of the story is that Giorgio is on 'the rebound' (cf. "No One Has Ever Loved Me"). I really think that we are meant to believe he genuinely falls in love with her, and I don't buy it for a second. Some great songs in the show though, but I don't think it 'works'.

I think that is the fatal flaw with the show. Trying to explain that he loves her because of his 'narcissism' is, in my opinion, overanalysing the show and trying to make it work when it just doesn't.

Sondheim: "The audience would not buy the idea that this good looking guy would fall in love with this obsessive, grasping, difficult, unpleasant woman. So I wrote a song called Loving You".

"Perhaps it's simply a story about the immense seductiveness of being utterly loved, lived and died for like Fosca claims to love Giorgio.... but in what sense is that kind of consuming obsession really love for either Fosca or for Giorgio?"

It's not. That's why the show is called Passion and not Love.

He wrote it at the same time as he was falling in love with Peter Jones. Of course he's going to associate the piece with love, much as he claims that little of himself is present in his work. It's about passion and obsession, not real love.

Interesting that the movie's title is Passione d'amore, Passion of Love, equating the two.

But in your opinion, g.d.e.l.g.i., does it work as a show about passion and obsession without real love?

Can an audience's interest be sustained by a "love triangle" without real love? More to the point, why are some people's interest sustained by this one? Unless they actually do find real love in it?

And if they do find real love in it, how?