Passion
Joan Marcus
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The musical, directed by Lapine, stars Donna Murphy as Fosca, Jere Shea as Giorgio and Marin Mazzie as Clara.
Passion marks the third collaboration for Lapine and Sondheim, who won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for
Into the Woods. The impetus for the show came from Sondheim, who was taken quite literally with the 1981 movie
Passione dâAmore, director Ettore Scolaâs adaptation of Tarchettiâs novel.
Lapine is not as big of a fan of the movie as Sondheim, and it was only after he read Tarchettiâs book that he became excited about the material: âWhen we started talking about the project, I said Iâd like to do it as an opera. It felt very operatic to me. As it turned out, I was wrong. We got to the workshop and we had so much music, and I realized the music was losing its power because it was ever-present. So we went back to a lot of the book and were more selective about where the music came in.