Cocktail Party Fact: The musical Passion is based on the 1981 Italian film Passione d’Amore, which is based on the 1869 novel Fosca by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (the English translation was retitled Passion). Passion was first intended to be a one-act musical, to be paired with another one-act musical about the body-building business (to be called Muscle), two shows about different kinds of obsession. But Passion kept getting bigger and bigger and finally became a full-length musical on its own, though still without an intermission. Another interesting tidbit — the original novel was highly autobiographical — almost everything that happens to Giorgio Bachetti, the central character, actually happened to the author Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, who died before finishing the book.

Here’s the Plot: Giorgio Bachetti, a handsome army captain in 1863 Italy is having an affair with Clara, a beautiful married women (their opening scene is one of the steamiest scenes in musical theatre history, done in the nude on Broadway). He is transferred to a remote outpost where he meets Fosca, the colonel’s cousin, an ugly, demanding, selfish, dying woman. Fosca immediately becomes obsessed with Giorgio and begins stalking him, following him everywhere, demanding more and more of his time and attention. At one point, Giorgio is coerced into visiting Fosca on her sickbed and she convinces him to write a letter that she will dictate — a love letter, it turns out, from Giorgio to Fosca. Because she is his colonel’s cousin and because of Giorgio’s overly developed manners, he can’t get away from her. Soon, he finds himself feeling differently about Clara and he ends their affair. Finally, Giorgio realizes he has never before felt the kind of extreme, unconditional love that Fosca feels for h im. He finds that he has fallen in love with her as well. But the colonel has found the letter from Giorgio that Fosca has dictated, and thinking Giorgio is toying with Fosca’s emotions, the colonel challenges Giorgio to a duel. The night before the duel, Giorgio confesses his love to Fosca and though it may prove fatal for her, they make love. The colonel is wounded in the duel and Giorgio suffers a massive nervous breakdown. In the last scene, Giorgio receives a letter and a box at the asylum where he is a patient. The letter is from the camp’s doctor telling him that Fosca died three days after Giorgio left. The box contains some of Fosca’s belongings as well as her last letter to Giorgio, in which she tells him that for the first time in her life she knows how it feels to be loved, that she finally knows that she is worth loving, and that she knows her love will live on in Giorgio.

Memorable Melodies: “Loving You,” “Happiness,” “No One Has Ever Loved Me,” “I Wish I Could Forget You.”

Vital Statistics: Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book and direction by James Lapine. It opened on Broadway Nov. 9, 1994 and ran for about a year, earning mixed reactions from critics and audiences alike. The show was produced later in London to greater acclaim. Subsequent productions in the U.S., at the Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C. and New Line Theatre in St. Louis, proved that the show works better in smaller venues and with a more aggressive approach than the original.

Why See It: This is the most rapturous, emotional musical ever on Broadway. Despite the slow, ponderous original production, it can be a thrilling, deeply moving, emotionally overwhelming experience. The lush, almost continuous score is built more like a symphony than a collection of single songs — all of the pieces relating to each other through the extensive use of musical themes and motifs — and this gives the show a sense of musical unity and power that few other musicals have. The extreme nature of the characters and their actions can seem ridiculous in a bad production, but in a good production is literally thrilling.