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| Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 05:23 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: did anyone see a Fosca besides Donna in the original PASSION? - Chazwaza 02:54 am EST 03/01/19 | |
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| Sadly, I've never seen it live. I've only seen taped productions. But I'm convinced that Fosca is one of the hardest roles in the entire canon, not just the Sondheim canon, and I'm not exactly sure WHAT Fosca needs to do to make you care about her, view her as sympathetic and lovely, instead of controlling and pathetic. How did Ms. Murphy (or any other Fosca) pull it off? Can the audience feel ambivalent about Fosca and still find the work satisfying? Do they NEED to be rooting for her? And if the audience isn't pulling for her, but really wants to see Giorgio end up with Clara, does the whole show fail to move us as we should? From the outside, it really doesn't seem to me that Sondheim or Lapine did the role many favors in the writing. It just seems like a herculean lift to make the audience -- and Giorgio -- want what she wants. Any observations / analysis from someone who's spent more time with the piece than I have? - GMB |
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| It’s not a sporting event | |
| Posted by: KingSpeed 10:19 pm EST 03/03/19 | |
| In reply to: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:23 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| Theater doesn’t require a character for you to root for. A show like PASSION is more complicated than that. | |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:12 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:23 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| "I'm not exactly sure WHAT Fosca needs to do to make you care about her, view her as sympathetic and lovely, instead of controlling and pathetic." I don't want to see Fosca sympathetic and lovely. What's the point of the show if she's played that way? That was one of the problems I had with the CSC production. Fosca seemed just very mildly depressed, basically pretty nice, and simply in need of a slight makeover to look like Giorgio's attractive if somewhat older wife. |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: Ann 05:25 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:23 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| I think the show really makes the audience squirm in how we react to Fosca. I usually go back and forth between being repulsed and rooting for her. It's what makes the musical so wonderful. Oh, and the score. Honestly, I don't remember ever really wanting Giorgio to end up with Clara. |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 05:43 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - Ann 05:25 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| I think the SHOW is supposed to make us squirm, at so many moments, and although Sondheim has said that he needed to allow himself to experience true love to know how to write this, I am still not sure that I want to hear the way love sounds to Sondheim. It sounds like drums? And piercing minor chords? Don't get me wrong. PASSION gets under my skin just like it gets under everybody's who loves Sondheim. But there are parts of the score I genuinely love, and other parts I nearly detest. More than anything, though, I just admire how ballsy Sondheim was to write it the way he did. This score is ballsy AF. And I love him for having that courage. - GMB |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 11:31 pm EST 03/02/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:43 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| I'm very curious what parts of the score you nearly detest. As a huge fan of the score, it's hard to imagine but I am curious. I feel like for most people the style of the score and its themes and motifs hook you, or they do not. The only parts I don't love as much are parts of the Soldier's Gossip, but even that I find enjoyable and servicing that part of the story/those character/the commenting on it that the audience needs/world building. | |
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| -- what I adore in Sondheim's writing for PASSION (and what I don't) | |
| Last Edit: GrumpyMorningBoy 03:38 am EST 03/04/19 | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 03:31 am EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - Chazwaza 11:31 pm EST 03/02/19 | |
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| I got the CD of PASSION the week it showed up at my local Borders Book Store. So... i've been sitting with this music for 20+ years. In that time, as I've aged, I've found that the whole piece makes a WHOLE LOT MORE SENSE now then it did when I was a young adult. In some ways, it's grown on me. But more than anything, I've come to realize just how unique and ballsy it was. I supposed, at the time, that we'd see / hear more musicals that resembled PASSION, and Sondheim was just ahead of the pack. I do think that some of LaChiusa's works (especially MARIE CHRISTINE) sit in a kind of similar space, tonally, but even within the full Sondheim canon, PASSION is a very rare bird. And as I write above, I do think that Sondheim's decisions on what love sounds like are trenemdously unique. I think the "your love will live in me" motif -- sung by Fosca (and by Clara as "how long were we apart") and then and repeated by the entire cast in the Finale -- is what love, at least in this piece, sounds like to Sondheim. It sounds unresolved. That melody just slips through those chords without ever landing happily on the tonic. My FAVORITE writing is the "Flashback" sequence. It's friggin genius. Up there with SWEENEY. The angular dissonance of the harmonies on "beauty is power / longing a disease" are, to me, the core of the entire musical. But the way the whole thing envelops spoken word / sung recitative, and knows exactly when to transition back and forth between the two, is arguably some of Sondheim's most skillfull writing of all time. The way he weaves real waltzes into the writing does (at times) evoke a bit of NIGHT MUSIC -- but how could it not, being in 3 -- but it works brilliantly here as a pattern that comments on the mores of the time. The way things are. The sexism, gender expectations, and limitations of being a woman are delivered in waltzes. I also LOVE the way that Greg Edelmann's character emerges here as a rare empath who shows true compassion for Fosca, and I adore the way their two melodies meet on the final note of on "it took her months to leave her bed." That's empathy, musicalized. I could go on and on about this sequence. I think it's astonishing. My biggest beefs with the score are the tone of some of the songs. I think a lot of the writing for Giorgio fails to reach the heights of the writing for Fosca. As a result, Giorgio, in the end, comes off as a bit emotionally immature in comparison to the other characters. I'm not sure if Sondheim musicalized the subtext as well as he could have. "Is This What You Call Love," as Georgio essentially scolds Fosca, is too one note for me, to be rather on the nose about it. I think the emotions of the lyric are far more complex than the music Sondheim composed here, which sounds a bit like a manic temper tantrum from someone who, frankly, needs to calm down. I'm not a composer, but if I were, I'd have matched that lyric with a melody that had more dynamics and complexity. I understand that it works to raise the stakes of the piece, and maybe that's why he wrote it this way, but I think it's a missed opportunity for a more nuanced exploration of those emotions from Giorgio. I like where the melody goes in the 'bridge' section -- "Love's, not a constant demand, it's a gift you bestow." Do you hear how Sondhem is trying to give Georgio the chance to change his tone of voice there? Sondheim's instinct was right. He should have applied that to the whole song. And finally, I'm really not convinced by the writing for "No One Has Ever Loved Me." It's probably the most important musical moment of the entire show, and I really don't think Sondheim's writing rises to the occasion. His melody on the opening lyric really isn't bad. Nice chromatics, nice range, nice inversion as it goes up. But from there, Sondheim pens a bit of a list about the things love is -- rather 1 Corinthians 13, no? -- and matches it to a melody that's banal and drab. Even the chords don't do anything all that interesting. It's like Sondheim had half a good melody in his mind to open this piece, but didn't know how to carry it forward and spin it into something more beautiful. God bless Jonathan Tunick, who really tries to dress it all up with some nice strings floating on top, but it's just not enough. I do think he knew that he hadn't struck gold there. Giorgio sings that thing once, and then they get OUTTA THERE, into the words! (with a little treat so Fosca can reprise "Happiness," which is the best melody of the whole show.) I think the score is uneven, yes. But when it's good, it's very, very good. This thread is many days old now and I'm not sure if anyone will read this, but it's been nice to put thoughts into words. :) - GMB |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:15 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:43 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| "although Sondheim has said that he needed to allow himself to experience true love to know how to write this" Are you sure he said this? I think Sondheim has several times said that people say that about him and the show, but that he's never said that. |
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| Quote from Sondheim | |
| Last Edit: T.B._Admin. 09:56 am EST 03/03/19 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 04:16 am EST 03/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - AlanScott 09:15 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| This is from a 2007 podcast interview with Sondheim, conducted by Norman Lebrecht (a name I hate to even type). Lebrecht (discussing Passion): Meryle Secrest, in your biography, suggests that it’s to do with the coming of love in your life, a powerful intimate relationship in your sixties. Is . . . . ? Sondheim (interrupting him): That’s completely nonsense because I wanted to do that show long before that ever happened to me. I saw the movie in . . . whatever year it was . . . nineteen-eighty (trailing off) . . . I’d say nineteen eighty-three. In this country anyway. I wanted to do it immediately. It's hard to punctuate that clearly, but Sondheim really interrupted him. NL was not at a temporary loss for words, as the ellipsis may suggest. He would have said more, but Sondheim was having none of it. He would not let that statement stand. |
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| THANK YOU for this... I'd been thinking of the Secrest biography. That was my only source. (nm) | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 02:44 am EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: Quote from Sondheim - AlanScott 04:16 am EST 03/03/19 | |
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| nm means naughty Meryle! | |
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| LOL. That is very funny. (nm) | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:11 am EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: THANK YOU for this... I'd been thinking of the Secrest biography. That was my only source. (nm) - GrumpyMorningBoy 02:44 am EST 03/04/19 | |
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| Naughty Meryle. | |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 06:32 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:43 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| Okay, so I decided to put on the score while I try to work. First off, I have to amend the comment above. They hear drums. We hear music. Those drums aren't supposed to sound like love, apparently. BUT DAMN, Fosca is SO COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG during the "Garden Sequence"! Like, that is NOT OKAY. You don't just chew out someone who you've known for weeks, and think that this is the right approach to get someone to be your "friend"... GIRL. No. We need to get Laura Benanti's opinion on this. Link below. - GMB |
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| Link | "LIFE WITH LAURA": Laura Benanti is "Fosca," the New Favorite Times Square Mascot |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 08:01 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 06:32 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| The "drums/music" reference is, I think, more to a simple bond between people - not specifically love. She's trying to tell Giorgio that she perceives him differently from the rest of the soldiers. "Perhaps it was the way you walked, the way you spoke to your men," she sings. He sees a man who (true or not) hears a beauty in something like a simple drumbeat, while for the others it's just a beat to march in line to. He, like she, she says, sees beauty in things where there doesn't seem to be beauty. I also love the way Fosca has to keep clarifying her thoughts (the wonderful wordplay with we/they and same/different): "They hear drums, You hear music, As do I, Don't you see? We're the same, We are different, You and I are different, They hear only drums..." |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: Quicheo 07:35 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - GrumpyMorningBoy 06:32 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| In the words of John Bucchino: "One hates that leading character in proportion to how desperately they've shown their own need." | |
| Link | Playbill by Lupone |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 09:19 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - Quicheo 07:35 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| I do tend to think that's basically correct. I think that the people who react most negatively to the character (when she's portrayed warts and all) are those who've behaved (or at least felt) similarly themselves or perhaps experienced others who've behaved that way to them. I've felt this way since previews way back when. One time I sat in front of two people who just couldn't stop laughing at and commenting on Fosca, and I had to restrain myself from saying to them, "Why do you feel so threatened by this character's behavior?" |
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| re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? | |
| Posted by: Quicheo 11:25 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Can we discuss / analyze? What's really required for a Fosca performance to work? - AlanScott 09:19 pm EST 03/01/19 | |
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| It is quite something to create a character that engenders so much projection. | |
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