From Fosca to Passion via Passione d'Amore
by Art Hilgart
In a previous article (Newsletter No. 8, see below), I discussed the magnitude of the transformation of Ignio Ugi Tarchetti's 1869 novel, Fosca, into the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical play, Passion. I've since had the opportunity to see the intermediate work that suggested the musical version, Ettore Scola's 1982 film, Passione d'Amore, and it offers additional reasons to be impressed with Sondheim's and Lapine's result.
The film is a straightforward narrative of the novel's events-- Giorgio, a handsome officer is in love with Clara, a beautiful married woman. He is transferred to a frontier outpost, where he becomes involved with Fosca, the sickly cousin of his superior. Passionparadoxically is more cinematic, with its use of flashback and dramatic realization of the novel's epistolary content. While the film's physical Clara is secondary to the obsessive Fosca, she is a continuous presence in the musical. In the novel, Giorgio's own health is fragile, but the musical follows the film in giving us a healthy officer.
In the gothic novel, Giorgio succumbs to the demonic possession of a grotesque Fosca and is driven mad by the revolting experience. In Passion, of course, Giorgio comes to love Fosca, and this is another contribution of Scola's film. In Passione d'Amore, however, Giorgio's transfer of affection seems abrupt and arbitrary, open to the interpretation that it may be an act of self sacrifice to reciprocate Fosca's devotion. With Sondheim and Lapine, it is clear that Giorgio responds to Fosca as a whole person whose love for him is more profound than Clara's feelings for her afternoon sexual playmate.
The two stage transformation of the story as it moves from novel to film to musical play is most apparent in the characterization of Fosca. In the novel, she is essentially a loathsome and destructive vampire-- for his recent English translation, Lawrence Venuti used the style of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Scola anticipated thisparallel in Passione d'Amore, using several references to F. W. Murnau's 1921 film of the Stoker novel, Nosferatu. For example, Scola's filming of the scene in which Giorgio first stays in Fosca's room until dawn almost copies the climax of the Murnau film in which the chaste heroine lures the vampire to her bed and keeps him there until he is destroyed by the sunrise. The connection is intensified by Scola's casting of Fosca-- Valeria D'Obici might be a twin of Max Schreck, Murnau's Nosferatu, and the resemblance to the hairless Schreck was completed by filming her with her hair tightly pulled back from her face. But although Scola's Fosca also copies Schreck's jerky body and eye movements, she is pitiable rather than sinister or repellant. When present at her deranged outbursts, Scola's Giorgio is frightened for her, not of her.
In Passion, Fosca still suffers a fatal illness, but not one that is psychically contagious. Her looks are plain, not ugly, and she is self-aware, not self-pitying. Not bizarre, she displays dignity and sadness, and when she must press her love on Giorgio, it is mixed with a sense of remorse for causing him discomfort. In all of this, Sondheim and Lapine have made her lovable. Remarkably, they have accomplished this while closely following the elements of their sources, even using much of the original dialog. The credit lies mainly in the music and lyrics, which beautifully reveal character and trace the transference of Giorgio's affection and his growing maturity. Lapine's book and direction are essential contributions in which a succession of subtle changes from the novel and film produce an utterly different whole. Donna Murphy's brilliant performance in the New York production fully realized the authors' intentions.
A variety of chess puzzles involves a board covered with knights where one is required to exchange the positions of the white and black pieces in a minimum of moves. In Passion, Sondheim and Lapine solve such a problem three times-- they seamlessly replace Giorgio's infatuation with Clara (in Italian, "light") with his love for Fosca ("dark"), they convert Fosca from the original's monstrous villain to heroine, and they use a mediocre novel and an interesting but flawed film to create a masterpiece.
Note. The New York production with Donna Murphy, Jere Shea, and Marin Mazzie has been beautifully preserved on film, with James Lapine again as director. It has been shown on American public television, and the BBC has acquired broadcast rights for the U.K.
From Fosca to Passion
Art Hilgart
The publication in English of Tarchetti's 1869 Italian novel Fosca, the source of the Ettore Scola film that inspired Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Passion, provides an instructive case study in the translation of written fiction to the stage. More usefully, it conveys insight into the remarkable accomplishment of Sondheim and Lapine in transforming a trashy book into artful commentary on human nature. Although Passion uses the characters, situation, and plot of Fosca, the musical is a reversal of the book in almost every important respect.
Fosca is little more than a nineteenth century gothic horror novel— Lawrence Venuti, the translator, used Bram Stoker's Dracula as his English language style model. In the course of the first-person narrative, Tarchetti's possibly autobiographical stand-in Giorgio is driven to madness, first by what he considers betrayal by his lover Clara, then by surrender to the monstrous vampire-like Fosca.
In Fosca, Giorgio is a whining egotist, a mixture of arrogance and self-pity, thrown into physical illness by the slightest emotional strain. In Passion, he is a serious young man, healthy, intelligent, and capable of growth. The Clara of the novel is in a loveless marriage and apparently loves Giorgio. Her return to her husband is prompted by a sense of responsibility— his financial reverses require her to devote herself to her family. For the stage Clara, the relationship with Giorgio is apparently a dalliance, however intense, one broken when Giorgio seeks a more permanent relationship. The novel's Fosca is a caricature of evil, grotesquely ugly, diseased, and spiritually destructive. In Passion, Fosca is a plain woman, not an ugly one, intelligent, and emotionally mature. She loves Giorgio as a person, not as a potential victim. All she has in common with the novel's character is a debilitating illness.
The climactic episode of both novel and musical is the sexual union of Giorgio and Fosca. In the novel, Giorgio is distraught at what he considers to be Clara's faithlessness, and succumbs to Fosca, an experience he recalls with horror and disgust, one that has driven him into permanent derangement. In Passion, Giorgio's recognition of the superficial qualities of his affair with Clara releases his feelings for Fosca, and the last night is lovemaking in the fullest sense. Fosca's subsequent death ends the novel, but Sondheim and Lapine add a final letter from Fosca which becomes a duet with Giorgio celebrating their union, self-understanding, and liberation.
The novel stereotypically identifies goodness with physical
beauty and light (clara) and evil with ugliness and darkness (fosca).
Sondheim and Lapine make no such judgements, but in words and especially
in music, contrast surface with substance. Their accomplished love
story makes Romeo and Juliet look like kid stuff.