Passion (1997 London Cast)
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Category: Music CD
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CD Details
Edition: Music CDFormat: Cast Recording, Import
CD Release Date: 1997-01-01
Music Label: First Night
Soundtracks:
- Happiness
- First Letter
- Second Letter
- Third Letter
- Fourth Letter
- Fosca's Entrance
- Garden Sequence
- Transition
- Fifth Letter
- Scene Seven, Part One
- Scene Seven, Part Two (Clara's Letter)
- I Wish I Could Forget You
- Soldiers' Gossip
- Flashback
- Sunrise Letter
- Is This What You Call Love?
- Soldiers' Gossip (reprise)
- Nightmare
- Forty Days
- Loving You
- Scene Twelve
- Scene Thirteen (Farewell Letter)
- Just Another Love Story
- No One Has Ever Loved Me
- Scene Fourteen
- The Duel
- Finale
Music reviews of Passion (1997 London Cast)
Music Review: UK Passion is pretty but perplexing
Rating: 3 Stars
Stephen Sondheim is a master of musical theatre, and I think PASSION is his best score. I fell in love with the original Broadway production on DVD and have played the original cast recording of that production endlessly since then. So I was excited to hear this British alternative with Michael Ball and Maria Freedman, two performers whose fine work I have enjoyed before in other shows like Les Miserables, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Woman in White. They do indeed give powerful performances here, and the recording benefits from being more complete than its Broadway counterpart, but the sheer power of the original cast remains unmatched. Ball is the wonderfully cast star that he always is, and in particular, Freedman's Fosca feels markedly more bitter and angrier than Donna Murphy's resigned, desperate characterization -- an entirely different, rougher take on her, but one which is equally valid and interesting. She seems to struggle to say every word she utters, which certianly works for the character but makes it less harmonious to hear than Murphy's version.
Perhaps the most significant drawback to the recording is Helen Hobson, who tries very hard and sounds sweet, but kind of lost (though she improves over the course of the CD.) She has a thin voice which is good on its own but simply cannot compare to Marin Mazzie. Altogether, these three sound fine, especially if you have not heard the other recording, but the overall tone is rougher and less operatic than the original. Still, having the entire London Philharmonic behind the score is a wonderful thing to hear.
The significant benefit of this recording, however, is that it includes more transitional dialogue between the musicalized sequences. This makes it more complete and easier to follow if you are a newcomer to the score than the Broadway CD which simply omits much of this material. (However, the best introduction to the show remains watching the Broadway cast on DVD, which is complete and allows you to see the staging as well as listen.) This London version also includes a version of "No One Has Ever Loved Me" sung by Gorgio to the Doctor, which was cut from the Broadway version because director James Lapine felt that it undermined the conclusion between Georgio and Fosca. It is a nice inclusion here and Ball sings it masterfully, but Lapine was correct, which renders the version sung to Fosca later on anticlimactic.
I do not mean for this review to sound as negative as it perhaps does, because I really do enjoy this recording very much, and if you are interested in owning multiple recordings of the show, it is most definately valuable. However, the Broadway cast is essentially perfect, and if you are only going to own one CD of this score, it should be hat one.
Description of Passion (1997 London Cast)
Based on the 1981 Italian film Passione d'amore, Stephen Sondheim's multiple Tony Award-winning musical/chamber opera Passion follows a self-centered soldier, Giorgio (Michael Ball), whose idyllic happiness with a married woman, Clara (Helen Hobson), is interrupted by his transfer to another post. There, he meets Signora Fosca (Maria Friedman, best known these days for the video production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), a homely and ill woman who soon falls in love with Giorgio and pursues him relentlessly. Giorgio believes he would never leave the beautiful Clara, but he underestimates the power of Fosca's passion. "Loving you is not a choice, it's who I am," she tells him, in Sondheim's rich tapestry of a score that is less individual numbers than a constant flow of gorgeous melodies, dialogue, letters between the characters, and a group of soldiers that serves as a Greek chorus.After a 1996 London revival, the same cast recorded the score live in concert at the BBC Hippodrome in 1997. Ball is perfectly cast as Giorgio, and Friedman and Hobson excel, even if they can't quite match Tony-winner Donna Murphy and Marin Mazzie of the original Broadway cast. It's almost a moot point, though, because the original Broadway cast recording is currently out of print (although a video version is available). So if you want Passion, this is your only option, and it's a good one. --David Horiuchi
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