Stephen Sondheim had not been on Broadway for nearly five years. Assassins had been an off-Broadway production, and so when Passion opened in 1994, after a very labored preview process (and still not widely lauded in reviews), it received a lot of attention. Nominated for 10 Tony awards, one of the four trophies it won was Best Musical, which after only running for 280 performances makes it the shortest-running show to win the top award. Here is the Original Broadway Cast’s remarkable performance [1h55m] of this one-act, melodically intertwined musical involving lessons about love.
There’s not a lot of additional material for Passion, except for a Live From Lincoln Center with Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris, and Audra McDonald 1h54m]. This follows musical and script revisions made for the 1996 London Premiere of the show, so it’s a bit different.