by Nestor Mata, Malaya, Thursday, March 18, 2010
“MAGNIFICENT” is the word that best describes the performance of the “Song of Joseph” at the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo, main theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
It’s a musical drama about the life and love of Joseph for Mary which blends remarkably classical music with Broadway-like and pop-rock songs and even touches of Gregorian chants.
The libretto was written by Fides Cuyugan Asensio, operatic diva and guru, her first musical and seventh music theater work. The scores for the songs and orchestra were composed by Raymond Roldan, the musical director, and his wife Jeannelle Bihag Roldan, who also sang and played the roles of “Elizabeth,” Mary’s cousin, and “Ester,” the adulterer who was stoned to death.
The musicale is focused on the “divinely-inspired marriage” of Joseph and Mary. It’s in two Acts with thirteen scenes. And the most moving scenes, to me, are the “Annunciation of the Virgin,” the “Revelation of Mary,” and the “Visitation”, and “Joseph’s Dream.” These were drawn from the Biblical passages in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
In the Gospel of Luke, the angel told Mary “thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call him Jesus. Then said Mary unto the angel, how shall that be, seeing I know not a man?”
In the Gospel of Matthew, the only other Biblical account of Jesus’ birth, the story is told from Joseph’s point of view. Upon learning that his betrothed Mary is “with child of the Holy Ghost,” he thought of “putting her away privily.” But a dream transformed his views when an angel tells him that the father of Mary’s child is God himself.
“That’s why Fr. Rony B. Alkonga, Provincial Superior of the Oblates of St. Joseph in the Philippines called the “Song of Joseph” a religious-theater masterpiece.”
The role of “Joseph” was acted superbly and sang with ardor by Jon Joven. He has extensive Broadway and off-Broadway experiences, as well as on the Philippine stage.
The role of “Mary” was superbly dramatized and sang with soaring passion by Tricia Jimenez. She took up voice at the UP Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Ms. Asensio.
The other performers who also gave life and luster to the story of Joseph, with their magnificent acting and singing in their respective roles, were Maricris Joaquin as “Rebekak,” Emelyn Olfindo as “Hannah,” Jennifer Villagas as “Ruth,” Charlene de Asis Magalit as “Debbie,” Conrado “Dondi” Ong as “King Herod,” Edwin Decenteceo as “Jacob” and “Efraim,” Greg de Leon as “King Melchor” and “Joaquim,” Agripino del Fierro as “King Gaspar,” and Adriel Exconde as the “Young Jesus” and Miguel Aguila as the “Teenage Jesus.”
The “Song of David” was produced and presented by the Oblates of St. Joseph, according to Fr. Alkonga, “to promote the devotion to St. Joseph, the just and faithful husband of Mary and foster father of the Child Jesus.”
***The musicale “Song of Joseph” is really a romanticized story of the life, love and death of St. Joseph.
As a young man he courted Mary. After their betrothal had taken place, with the marriage ceremony still several months away, Mary told her parents that she was with child and that it happened soon after an angel visited her and said she was chosen to bear the Messiah.
Upon learning this, Joseph was at first devastated, but his overpowering love for Mary kept him silent until in a dream an angel dispelled his unease over her condition and told him that the father of Mary’s child was God.
The birth of Jesus was indeed miraculous. But, according to Biblical scholars, there were other instances of similarly miraculous births.
They cited this passage in Genesis 17:19 about Abraham’s wife, Sarah: “And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac.”
From Sarah conceiving Isaac to Hannah bearing Samuel, miraculous births have deep roots in Judaism. Mary’s purity, however, is distinctive, for the other Biblical examples of God’s granting children to the aged or the barren do not involve virgins but ordinary married women.
The myths surrounding Caesar Augustus, who reigned as emperor from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14, were not dissimilar to the imagery that the Gospels of Luke and Matthew used to describe the birth of Jesus.
Omens had heralded the birth of Augustus, which was itself the result of divine intervention, according to Virgil’s Fourth Epilogue in 40 B.C. “Upon the Child now to be born, under whom the race of iron will cease and a golden race will spring up over the whole world …smile favorably, for your own Apollo is now King.”
Indeed, these parallels to the story of Jesus seem to follow the same pattern. A deity chooses to send a son from the divine to the temporal world through a woman, the glorious news of the coming of a king is made known to others, and the woman’s loyal husband, rather than recoiling, is included in the revelation.
But none of those figures in ancient history was a product of a Christ-like conception as portrayed in the Gospels. In fact, scholars of antiquity have not found another example that mirrors the Luke’s “Annunciation” and Matthew’s “Joseph’s Dream.”
These two and other moving events in the Gospels came to life vividly in the magnificent performance of young Filipino singers and actors in that musical drama of the “Song of Joseph.”
