Passion ~ Themes etc.

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BakerWilliams
#1Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 5:34pm

I watched Passion again today, and like always I found it devastating and gorgeous, but I still cannot get a grasp on the relationship between Giorgio and Fosca. I always found Giorgio to be taking advantage of Fosca's weakness, and that their relationship is ultimately due to Giorgio's need for power, but several lyrics in the show contradict that. I was hoping that others might be able to provide some insight into the overall purpose of the show in general.


"In memory, everything happens to music"

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ray-andallthatjazz86
#2Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 5:45pm

What about the text suggests that Giorgio is taking advantage of Fosca? How is his apparent need for power (again, not sure where you are getting that from) satisfied by being with Fosca, whose advances he spends a good portion of the piece rejecting? 


"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"

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BakerWilliams
#3Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 5:55pm

Well that's just my interpretation, which is why I was hoping that you or someone else could share their own.


"In memory, everything happens to music"

ray-andallthatjazz86 Profile Photo
ray-andallthatjazz86
#4Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 6:41pm

Your interpretation of what though? I am genuinely asking. For you to interpret something it has to be in the text first, there has to be some sort of textual evidence (even if it's a small detail) that you can then interpret and point to in order to support your interpretation. If it's not supported by the text, then you are not interpreting, you are making up things up. Again, not saying that's what you are doing, I'm just wondering where in the text there's something to support the idea that Giorgio is taking advantage of Fosca or that he is power hungry or that his relationship with Fosca brings him any sort of power.


"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"

indytallguy
#5Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 6:56pm

Interesting. I'm not sure I've ever thought about Giorgio having a need for power as a driver in his relationship with Fosca.

Others no doubt will have more detailed insights than me, but I think when Giorgio sings "No one has ever loved me ... " he's articulating the transformation that has happened in his view of Fosca and her obsession with him.

For me, the show illuminates questions related to the definition of love, who we choose to love (or feel we have no choice but to love), and how we express and act on our love and commitment to them.

“No one has ever loved me
As deeply as you.
No one has truly shown me
What love could be like until now:

Not pretty or safe or easy
But more than I ever knew.
Love within reason -
That isn't love.
And I've learned that from you..”

Updated On: 2/14/16 at 06:56 PM

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GavestonPS
#6Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 7:13pm

Count me in the crowd that doesn't see how Giorgio can be taking advantage of a woman who has done nothing but throw herself at him for the entire play. If the OP sees Giorgio as merely taking advantage of an invalid, I don't see how the OP finds the piece "devastating".

 

That isn't to say Giorgio doesn't have his own needs and motivations. It is very important to him to be a gentleman; otherwise, he would have been rude to Fosca from the beginning and avoided her thereafter. (And, of course, her cousin is his boss, if you want to be cynical about it; but I don't see anything in the text to suggest that Giorgio expects or cares about being promoted.)

 

One might compare the theme of the play to Sondheim's oft-restated contrast between being "nice" and being "good". Only in PASSION the contrast is between a pleasant attraction between pretty people and all-consuming desire, as much emotional and spiritual as physical.

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imeldasturn
#7Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 7:33pm

Actually it's Fosca taking advantage of Giorgio, this is made very clear in the novel, where love is presented as an illness and at the very beginning Giorgio says he's not gonna tell a love story, but the story of an obsession. In the musical Fosca is not the "vampire-like" lady of the novel, but she stills stalks Giorgio until he gets sick.

Updated On: 2/14/16 at 07:33 PM

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JRybka
#8Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 9:37pm

I had a fabulous conversation with someone about Passion and how this was very first true love story written by Sondheim.  It is his "love letter" to his partner Peter Jones. 


"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."

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BakerWilliams
#9Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 9:45pm

Before you read, I'm willing to admit I might be wrong if so many people disagree with me, but this is just my interpretation.

 

I'm honestly a bit surprised nobody else agrees with me. Basically I find Fosca to be emotionally crippled, and not of sound mind or body. She is unable to form proper feelings for him. Instead, being the raw nerve ending that she is, flinging herself at him. Giorgio is frequently very rude to her and flaunts his happiness in her face. Then he writes the letter to her and sleeps in her bed and then abandons her again. If we think of Fosca closer to a child than a fully fledged adult, we can see that she really has no idea how to process her feelings and that Giorgio is basically playing with her. By the end, as soon as he turns to her they have intercourse. He takes no time to actually do anything with her. His display of love is only physical, whereupon he leaves her forever. At several points in the show, Fosca is literally on her knees telling him that she is devoted to him. I dunno, doing something like that to someone who is so emotionally crippled feels like taking advantage to me. I feel devastated because of my sorrow for Fosca and because it is one of the saddest shows I've ever seen.


"In memory, everything happens to music"
Updated On: 2/14/16 at 09:45 PM

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Charley Kringas Inc
#10Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/14/16 at 10:03pm

I can definitely see that. One of the show's themes, it seems to me, is the inhumanity of passion. They both want each other in an odd, gutteral way, and, against social mores, he gives in. She's allowed, in a sense, to be inappropriate because she's considered "damaged" but Giorgio is an upstanding, civil man of sound reputation, so for him to descend like that is to allow himself to become an animal. It's even a plot point - the Colonel accuses Giorgio of taking advantage of her and challenges him to a duel. Sondheim presents the characters as being caught in a trap between pure, instinctual, and potentially lustful emotion and the rigid consciousness of society.

 

As to Giorgio's need for power, I'd have to rewatch it but I can understand that as well, depending on the performance. Here he is, having a respectful affair with a respectful woman, going to his respectful duties, and he meets someone over whom he can exert total domain. If you read it as a blandly bourgeois man craving control and getting it, then it becomes a much darker, almost sadistic story.

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chernjam
#11Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/15/16 at 5:43pm

Interesting thoughts... have always found Passion to cause deep reflection.  Saw the original production the matinee before the Tony's and have seen the various broadcasted versions and all the recordings of it, so it is definitely (score wise) probably my favorite of Sondheim's musicals.

Story wise, to me it all comes back to "I never knew what love was..."  At the beginning Clara and Giorgio think they've found it - when what they're experiencing is passionate pleasure, attraction, lust even?  Giorgio trying to explain love to Fosca (who also doesn't know what love is) soon realizes that his and Clara's relationship isn't as loving as he imagined.  She's being unfaithful, they're lying, hiding about their relationship... it becomes more about satisfying their pleasure.

Only gradually, painfully, excruciatingly painful that it's at times difficult to watch - does Fosca and Giorgio eventually come to discover the truth of love is in sacrificing ones self (pleasure, desire, etc) for the beloved.

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chernjam
#12Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/15/16 at 5:43pm

Interesting thoughts... have always found Passion to cause deep reflection.  Saw the original production the matinee before the Tony's and have seen the various broadcasted versions and all the recordings of it, so it is definitely (score wise) probably my favorite of Sondheim's musicals.

Story wise, to me it all comes back to "I never knew what love was..."  At the beginning Clara and Giorgio think they've found it - when what they're experiencing is passionate pleasure, attraction, lust even?  Giorgio trying to explain love to Fosca (who also doesn't know what love is) soon realizes that his and Clara's relationship isn't as loving as he imagined.  She's being unfaithful, they're lying, hiding about their relationship... it becomes more about satisfying their pleasure.

Only gradually, painfully, excruciatingly painful that it's at times difficult to watch - does Fosca and Giorgio eventually come to discover the truth of love is in sacrificing ones self (pleasure, desire, etc) for the beloved.

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GavestonPS
#13Passion ~ Themes etc.
Posted: 2/15/16 at 10:52pm

With respect, I think it's an error to judge the characters of PASSION as if they were guests on a very special episode of MAURY.

 

For example, the point isn't that Clara is "unfaithful" to Giorgio--she's married to someone else, after all. The point is that she is practical. She will leave her husband to be with Giorgio, but only when her child is grown and she won't lose custody in a divorce. Now realistically, this is a perfectly reasonable, even admirable position for a mother to take. Who among us would blame her?

 

But Giorgio's response is that practicality is incompatible with passionate love. True love--he has learned from Fosca--is rash, immoral, beyond rational calculation. Of course he's being unfair to Clara, but that's a realistic concern and outside the argument of the play. The play's argument is that TRUE love eclipses everyday concerns such as etiquette and a balance of personal power.

 

Moreover, I think the OP makes the mistake of seeing the entire play from Fosca's point of view. Giorgio isn't "flaunting" his happiness to hurt Fosca; he's merely discussing his life with someone who doesn't yet seem to him a potential romantic option.

 

In PASSION, love isn't "nice" or pleasurable or even satisfying, it's an obsession, unattractive and uncomfortable, particularly when it is unrequited.