Wailing even more operatically are several cameo figures who have been able to exercise some influence under the present arrangement, but whose parties might be wiped out if a new law were to give Italy an entirely first-past-the-post system.
First seen on Broadway in 1994, "Passion" is a Proust-flavored, operatically intense musical whose central character, an unattractive and terminally ill woman named Fosca (Ms. Kuhn), develops an uncontrollable obsession with Giorgio (Ryan Silverman), a handsome young soldier who is in turn involved with Clara (Melissa Errico), a young married woman.