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Rock opera featuring Wolfgang songs finished
A yet-to-be titled two-hour rock opera featuring songs by Wolfgang is now ready to be staged. That is, if co-creators Basti Artadi and Nelsito Gomez find a producer.
“Yes, we finished it. All done. It’s a sung-through musical. Now all we need is the money (to produce it),” Gomez told GMA News online on Thursday night during the intermission of “Carousel,” Repertory Philippines ongoing production at the CCP New Black Box Theater or Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez.
Six months ago, Artadi revealed in an interview with GMA Integrated News that working on the musical was among the projects that kept him busy during lockdown.
We asked Gomez more details in a follow-up interview on Friday, and he began by saying, "it’s a rock opera approximately running two hours.”
There are about 24 songs included, Gomez shared and when asked if the song “24” from the 1997 album “Wurm” was part of it, he could only laugh saying: “If I mention the title, I’d give the story na.”
He will play the director of the new material while Artadi, being a founding member of Wolfgang, is lyricist-composer-librettist.
According to Gomez, Artadi had told him the other two members of Wolfgang, Manuel Legarda and Wolf Gemora, were supportive of the musical. Wolfgang’s original bassist Ramon “Mon” Legaspi died this year. He succumbed to cardiac arrest on October 3 at the age of 54.
In the earlier interview with GMA Integrated News, Artadi said Gomez is his only choice to direct the rock opera.
Gomez, besides being an acclaimed theater actor, isn’t new to directing musicals and plays. He was assistant director for the 2019 run and this year’s two re-staging of Trumpets’ “Joseph The Dreamer.” He is founding artistic director of the four-year-old Company of Actors in Streamlined Theatre or CAST, which has been known for its month-long staged reading festival usually held the first quarter of every year.
For 2023, he will direct “Uncle Jane,” his adaptation of Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” with actors Missy Maramara, Topper Fabreagas, Justine Peña, Justine Narciso, Leo Rialp, Jay Glorioso and Jaime del Mundo. It is slated for a limited three-day run from February 24 to 26 at a new alternative venue called The Mirror Studio located on the fifth floor of SJG Building, 8463 Kalayaan Avenue in Makati City.
Artadi meanwhile started in theater, playing the titular character in Atlantis Productions “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 2001. It took a long time before he went back on the live stage, playing St. Jimmy in Nine Works Theatricals and Globe’s co-produced “American Idiot” in 2016.
His most recent was the two-hander “Fermata,” the acclaimed one-act-play on child abuse written by Dustin Celestino and directed by Guelan Luarca for this year’s Virgin Labfest at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. It will have a re-staging in VLF 2023 as part of The Revisited Set.
This year, Wolfgang has been active again and recently toured the US with Razorback.
According to Artadi, he started conceptualizing the Wolfgang musical when he was writing songs for “Wurm,” which has the hits "Sanctified," "A Matter of Time," and Alone."
Incidentally, “A Matter of Time” has a popular version all over on You Tube with Artadi having a duet with Radha Cuadrado from “Acoustica.”
We can say it’s just a matter of time when the yet-to-be titled musical will find a producer and materialize next year.
“For sure, that song is part of the rock opera,” Gomez said. — LA, GMA Integrated News
