Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, produced in 1970 as a concept album, adapted for a Broadway musical in 1971 and released as a film in 1973.
The first time I listened it was approximately in 1977, not the original album neither the movie, but the Spanish version starred by Camilo Sesto, Teddy Bautista and Angela Carrasco.
By that time, a bunch of local guys used to gather at Santa Cecilia School, ran by Salesians priests, in a teenage group called “Juventud 75”, which was conceived as a choir for Sunday evening mass but also did leisure activities to keep youth away from harmful things (as they used to say).
Anyway, the leaders of that group had the ambition and the spirit to put the opera over stage several times through next decade, first selecting a few songs for live playing, later doing the whole musical in “fonomímica” (a sort of playback over the original LP record).
Since then, I have loved this opera, not only because both the music and the lyrics but for the main concept, which portrays a critical, questioning, skeptic and sometimes cynical view over Jesus’ story and role, through the character Judas.
I recently noticed that Jesus Christ Superstar was not a comfortable opera for many tough believers (who became protesters in some performances across the UK an USA), but I think that those young and maybe naïve people, mentioned some paragraphs above, were not aware (or were not able to catch the point) about this controversy.
In recent times, I have seen the original movie (1973), a remake (2000) and a live television special (2018), finding the same mesmerizing drama that captivated me as a young man.
I wonder if I will be so fortunate and will ever have the opportunity to see the real musical live.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario