Howling at the Areté, homegrown Si Faust ‘shows how rock opera is done’

Presented by the Areté, the creativity and innovation hub of Ateneo de Manila University, ‘Si Faust After Goethe’ ran until Saturday, Nov. 29, at the Doreen Black Box Theater, Areté.

“Tao sa pangil ng buwaya,
Kapangyarihan ng halik ni Hudas.”
— from Wolfgang’s Halik Ni Hudas

“The Jesuits rock!” —Nelsito Gomez, co-creator, director of Si Faust

At a time when more and more people believe that many of our incorrigibly corrupt government officials and politicians appear to have sold their souls to the devil, so to speak, there are theatrical productions like Nelsito Gomez and Basti Artadi’s Si Faust after Goethe with the Music of Wolfgang, a rock opera without any political agenda, but nonetheless hits the mark. 

In the busiest month for theater lovers, when a lot of productions are staged all over the metro, it was originally scheduled to run for only two weekends, Nov. 14-16 and Nov. 20-23, at the 200-seat Doreen Black Box Theater, Areté, Ateneo de Manila University. But given the clamor for an extension, Gomez and his team decided to add two shows: a matinee at 2 pm, and at 7:30 pm, on Saturday, Nov. 29.  

TheDiarist.ph asked Gomez on Messenger on Nov. 23 if there would be an extension and he replied, no. 

“We decided around 6 pm only. An hour and a half before what was supposed to be our final show,” he said. 

During curtain call in a jampacked theater, he told the audience: “All of this wouldn’t be possible without our fearless, fearless producers to take on a show like this. The ones who really deserve this are our amazing, amazing producers, (Areté artistic director) Dr. Jerry Respeto and (Areté technical director) D Cortezano.”

“Basti and I have been trying to get this onstage for quite a few years. And to basically make a story about the devil. (Stage it) of all the places, at Ateneo. The irony is (not lost) in all of us. The Jesuits rock!” Gomez said, in good humor, sending Ateneans in the audience into a laughing fit. 

Cortezano said that the lineup for the second season of Pumpon Ng Rosas, the title of theatrical productions solely produced by the Areté.

One is Subversive Lives, described by Cortezano as a devised play depicting the challenges faced by a family during the Martial Law era, to be directed by Delphine Buencamino. Next is the adaptation of the opera Carmen, to be directed by Jaime del Mundo. Third is an adaptation of the El Filibusterismo, titled Fili. The adaptation will be written by Guelan Luarca and to be directed by Gomez.

“For theater nerds and fans, you can just imagine Guelan Luarca and Nelsito Gomez collaborating on a work by our national hero,” he said. 

Pumpon Ng Rosas’ first season featured the late Ricardo Abad’s reconstructed Romeo and Juliet story in a Muslim setting, titled Sintang Dalisay, followed by Luarca’s Palanca-winning 3 Upuan and Quomodo Desolata Es: Isang Dalamhati, which was adapted and directed by Luarca from Dr. Jerry Respeto’s faithful translation into Filipino of Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. Closing the season is Si Faust.

The Nov. 29 additional shows were also announced by D Cortezano as one of the two “gifts” to the audience. The second gift was the surprise live performance by Wolfgang that followed. 

(We actually learned about it on opening day, Nov. 20. But we were told not to tell people, as plans may change. “Secret lang muna,” Gomez said. This writer immediately bought a ticket for the 7:30 pm show on the 23rd.)

While Cortezano and Gomez were making the announcements, we could hear some repetitive pounding sounds from behind the stage. We thought, there was some kind of carpentry work going on at Areté. But why at 10 pm on a Sunday? We learned later it was the drum set being prepared and tested for Wolfgang’s surprise live performance. 

Cortezano let Gomez announce the good news to the audience. “As you can see, there’s a glaring omission onstage, my co-creator, Basti Artadi. Unfortunately, he can’t be here with us tonight…because he is actually behind the box right now,” Gomez said, pointing to the back of the stage. 

“There is no way we’re gonna end this night without having Wolfgang in the house,” he added and the audience went wild. “Can everybody stand up?” 

As it turned out, Artadi brought in his band mates: drummer Francis Aquino, bassist Marco Cuneta, and Wolfgang founder lead guitarist Manuel Legarda. The actors and members of the creative team left the stage, moved to the right and left sides to be part of the audience. And onstage emerged the four two-legged wolves of Pinoy Rock.  

It was all pandemonium as they did four songs in this order: Halik Ni Hudas, Sandata, Mata ng Diyos, and an encore, Center of the Sun. 

Halik Ni Hudas may sound to be referring to notorious government officials, contractors and lawmakers enmeshed in the flood-control scandal in the news, but in fact, the song was written in the ‘90s. It is about betrayal—of all kinds, well, like most politicians and their promises of good governance during elections.  Sandata is Wolfgang’s poetic interpretation of a justified armed revolution by the people betrayed by its leaders, the fight for justice for all their sufferings. 

Before singing the Faustian-themed Mata ng Diyos, Artadi paid tribute to the late original bassist Mon Legaspi (1968-2022), who wrote most of Wolfgang songs in Filipino, including this one. It was supposed to be their last song, but the audience was apparently just warming up so they performed an encore, Center of the Sun, one of the highlights in Si Faust. Its meaning, up to now this writer still can’t explain. It is poetry laden with metaphors and allusions, it could probably refer to Lucifer’s vanity, the fallen angel, or someone seeing things, a transcendent experience after popping Ecstasy (MDMA). 

What the hard-to-please theater critics and an acclaimed playwright wrote about this homegrown rock opera Si Faust.

“Hayop ang Si Faust. Devilishly good… finally an unapologetically ear-shattering, go-for-broke Pinoy Rock musical,” wrote Gibbs Cadiz, foremost theater critic, PhilStage Gawad Buhay Awards regular jury member and die-hard SB19 fan, on social media. 

Indeed, good music is good music.

Fellow Gawad Buhay Awards regular jury member and omnipresent theater audience (he seldom misses even university-based productions) Arturo Hilado told TheDiarist.ph in an online message that he’s from a different generation and his favorite musicians are The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez and James Taylor. He admits he knows nada about Wolfgang’s music. 

On his Facebook, he wrote: “(Si Faust) was something else, sui generis, so to speak. I have never watched a musical so uncompromisingly sewn out of a playlist from start to finish, with no concession to spoken dialogue, with perhaps a sole exception in those devastating three words: ‘Ako na lang.’ And in unrelenting hard rock tempo and volume! Yet the power of the tragic narrative never flagged. (Mind you, though I have always been partial to rock, I was totally oblivious to Wolfgang’s music.)” 

“The creativity of Nel Gomez and Basti Artadi in crafting the cosmic pathos of the Faust legend from that material is simply astonishing. In contrast to the classical Greek tragedy in a play like Medea, what they evoked was the spirit of true Christian tragedy (Faust’s embrace of damnation notwithstanding) and just as astonishingly realized by that trio of incredible actors: an incandescent (is that proper for Satan?) Maita Ponce, a charismatic Joseton Vergel-de Dios, and my god, those arias of Shaira Opsimar! That entire second act was hallucinatory. If that sounds breathless, that’s because it is,” Hilado added.

Emil Hofileña wrote for theaterfansmanila.com, the premier, most reliable website on anything about theater this side of Southeast Asia: “Nelsito Gomez’s direction of his cast and what we see on stage is pure classical theater, expressed in the more pronounced gestures of silent cinema. And even if Jim Ferrer’s choreography often focuses on the thrashing of bodies over neatness, the movements still manage to fill up the stage, spilling over the edge and into the first row of the audience. Gomez and the show’s co-creator, Wolfgang frontman Basti Artadi, leap over the traps that tend to bog down many other Filipino jukebox musicals, achieving a coherence and a briskness of pace that can be very rare to find in theater.”

“Any opaqueness in the storytelling only enhances the mythic feel of the music, like watching a classical painting come to life…one of the most thrilling experiences of live theater in recent memory and one of the best shows of 2025,” he added.

Guelan Luarca, playwright-director-actor-theater professor and Palanca Literary Awards Hall of Famer, wrote on his social media: “Of the shows I’ve seen this year, Si Faust is the best. This is theatricality. This is style and panache. This is how it’s done. I’m simping over this show.”

If the writer-director of 3 Upuan, Nekropolis (directed by Charles Yee for Tanghalang Pilipino), Ardor, Dogsblood, Impossible Dream (directed by Melvin Lee for Philippine Educational Theater Association), among other award-winning original plays, who has translated Shakesperean plays into Filipino, and adapted Batch ’81 and Kisapmata of the late, great auteur Mike de Leon into the live stage, makes such a comment, as we say in Filipino, “Tapos na ang boxing. May nanalo na.”

In the review for TheDiarist.ph, critic Vincen Gregory Yu wrote: “…if operas operate primarily on their strength of feeling and emotive capacities, then Si Faust is a categorical triumph, all 100 electrifying minutes of it a welcome jolt to senses primed to favor clear speech and straightforward theatrics. It’s high drama, showstopping vocals, and knockout visuals combined to produce Theater with a capital T. As Gen Z would say, it’s a total vibe.

“The musical direction and orchestration is by Kabaitan Bautista, and this opera is proof that those fields may have found a new force to be reckoned with. Listening to Wolfgang on Spotify days later, I was struck by the elegance and inventiveness of Bautista’s work for Si Faust. The musical flows like one continuous breath, almost a celestial emanation. A rerun of this lightning bolt of a production will be nothing if not divine justice.”

READ: 2025 is Ateneo’s year in theater?

Just pure coincidence, Wolfgang is celebrating its 30th year since the release of its self-titled album in 1995 and as Gomez told TheDiarist.ph, they used 30 songs of the band for Si Faust. 

By adapting Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust, Part 1 into a modern Filipino setting, Artadi and Gomez just created pure art. What they have is a dream creative collaboration that is neither rushed nor flashy, or something done for the sake of bringing a local rock band’s discography into theater. 

Like in Goethe’s story that has been adapted many times in different genres, there’s a preacher named Faust, played by Joseton Vergel-de Dios, who makes a bargain with the devil, Mephistopheles (Maita Ponce), for a reset, a second chance in life, in exchange for his soul. He falls in love with the young, beautiful Marga (Shaira Opsimar) and Faust is happy once again. But it comes to a point when he has to make a choice, the hardest, to make his loved ones survive.  

We’ve seen Opsimar play lead characters in jukebox musicals like Rak of Aegis, Walang Aray and Delia D, but her searing aria-like rendition of Halik Ni Hudas as a pained, suffering muse could be a career highlight. 

With Ponce as the devil, not a scene was wasted. She’s the real deal. If Wolfgang needed a second vocalist, a female, Ponce would be the best candidate. 

Vergel-De Dios, in this debut performance in professional theater, didn’t disappoint. He delivered and gave justice to the songs of Wolfgang with an effective theatrical flair. 

The very versatile Joshua Cabiladas plays Marga’s brother Tiño, and Matel Patayon plays Tiño’s wife Martha. The ensemble that composed the Greek chorus are MC Dela Cruz, Jam Binay, JV Fulgencio, Thor Ganchero and Iya Villanueva.

During Wolfgang’s performance, these actors were singing, headbanging, screaming, and I saw one lead actress (who shall remain nameless), a meter away from lead guitarist Manuel Legarda (as proof, there’s a video I took) holding her heart for a few seconds as if she was going to faint over his masterful riffs and hooks.  It follows, even if some of them were not fans before, they now all know by heart those 30 songs of Wolfgang used in Si Faust.

Just to get it out of the way, I am a fan of Wolfgang, Artadi’s post-Wolfgang music, and Gomez’s original and adapted works as director, playwright and actor. What I would say about Si Faust is biased.  And it is, indeed, the best homegrown rock opera of the year.  

As Cadiz, Yu and Hilado attested, you don’t have to be a fan of Wolfgang to enjoy Si Faust. How Gomez and Artadi adapted Goethe’s Faust, Part 1 into a modern, Filipino setting and wove the story into a rock opera is, indeed, the perfect union of Pinoy grunge-heavy metal and classical literature. 

From what I know, Gomez is a certified theater nerd, the type who probably read and recited the soliloquies of William Shakespeare and the monologues of Goethe as a child while most of us were hooked into memorizing the theme songs of The Teletubbies and, ugh, Barney The Purple Dinosaur.

“Barney is a dinosaur
from our imagination,
And when he’s tall,
He’s what we call 
a dinosaur sensation.”

And we can’t get those lines out of our head until now, like a childhood trauma. Who would have thought of creating a purple dinosaur for kids but someone probably on LSD?

Seriously now. Gomez breathes theater. With partner Sarah Facuri and close friends, Gomez started the group, Cast of Actors in Streamlined Theater PH (CAST PH), serving as artistic director. Even before the pandemic, they had been holding intimate staged readings—usually with a maximum of a hundred audience members—of the classics and contemporary plays in English for an affordable fee of P500 per show. Talk about liberalizing Broadway and West End productions.  

Besides being a theater person, Artadi has done his homework well when it comes to rock operas. Si Faust is a dream come true for him. It’s three decades in the making.  

In an earlier interview with this writer, he said he conceptualized a Wolfgang musical sometime in the mid-1990s. When he co-wrote some songs for the band’s third studio album, the all-English-song Wurm, he had something in mind, a rock opera like The Who’s 1969 concept rock opera album, Tommy.

“Yes, I’ve been listening to a lot of rock operas even back in the day. I’ve been hooked on Tommy and of, course, Jesus Christ Superstar. My concept was entirely a different story from Faust. Something about Philippine history, a very significant chapter.  What I had was a draft with all the songs in it. But what I needed was a proper writer who could make a good “himay” (fleshing out), someone who knows what he’s doing. So, when I gave it to Nel (Gomez), he told me, ‘This all sounds like Faust.’ And I was familiar with it, so I said, shit, let’s go!” Artadi told TheDiarist.ph on Sunday night. 

Incidentally, Tommy was restaged from March to July last year at the Nederlander Theatre in Broadway. 

Gillian Russo of The New York Theatre Guide wrote how Tommy paved the way for Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), The Who’s Quadrophenia (1973), Queen’s A Night At the Opera (1975), up to Green Day’s American Idiot (2004) and Smashing Pumpkins’ Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts (2023). 

Another coincidence: Artadi played Jesus in the late Bobby Garcia-directed Jesus Christ Superstar for Atlantis Theatrical Entertainment Group, and St. Jimmy in 9 Works Theatrical’s American Idiot.

Russo wrote: “The word ‘opera’ usually makes people think of classical music, but ‘opera’ can describe a sung-through narrative in any music genre. In releasing the Tommy album, The Who created the first rock opera.”

“The marriage of the classical opera format with the more modern rock genre makes Tommy—or any rock opera—a great intro to theatre for music lovers,” she added.

Tommy actor John Ambrosino, who plays Uncle Ernie, wrote: “This form was created by rock stars who wanted to be in the theatrical medium. This form changed musical theatre.”

We can say, it’s a breeze for Artadi to co-create Si Faust.

A band member who shall remain anonymous once told me Artadi is a nerd, not the stereotypical introvert with thick eyeglasses. His knowledge of the history of rock music equates with Gomez’s devotion to Shakespeare and the classics.  If you chance upon Artadi’s 2016 interview with the late Pepe Smith on You Tube, titled Rock Bato, you believe that his formative years were also in the 1960s. Every time Smith would mention a name of a band from that decade and the 1970s, Artadi knew who he was referring to, and the two would sing a line or two together.

Artadi, among the few rock vocalists and composers, also knows the language of theater. Besides playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar and St. Jimmy in American Idiot, he earned the nods of theater fans and critics when he played a middle-aged jazz bar owner coming to terms with the trauma from sexual abuse during his younger years. It’s for the one-act straight play in Filipino, the theatrical gem, Fermata, written by Dustin Celestino and directed by Guelan Luarca in 2023 for the Virgin Labfest at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. 

Now, he proved he can write a rock opera and with the right people helping him, what we have is a groundbreaking production. 

Even without a live band, the experience was more than enough for theater lovers.  

With the musical arrangement by Kabaitan Bautista, the songs of Wolfgang in this sung-through musical were neither forced nor chosen just because they were among the band’s hits. 

Gomez told us the 30 songs weren’t used in full but in a mashup of excerpts, otherwise the musical would last for about four to five hours.  

“I admit I was not that familiar with Wolfgang’ songs. So, what Basti gave me was the list of those songs he intended to use for the musical and some sort of summary on what each song is all about. I studied all the lyrics. What I did later on was pick here and there and they all fit the story of Faust. All the words in the musical are from those songs, except for a very few Basti re-worked to fit the narrative,” Gomez said. 

“And of course, there’s the spoken line ‘Ako na lang’ by Ton (Vergel-de Dios, when as Faust, he asked Mephistopheles to take his life instead, his soul, in order to save Marga), and when Maita (Ponce) talks to the audience (breaking the fourth wall) in Tagalog, in good humor praising the creators of Si Faust, at the start of the second act,” he added.

Fresh approach 

As for the story, there’s no need to warn the audience about spoilers. Goethe’s Faust is also a reinterpretation of a German medieval myth, a folk tale passed on to generations over meals or during bedtime to lull children to sleep, about how a disillusioned intellectual sold his soul to Lucifer for a life full of worldly pleasures. It has been adapted for the live stage many times, whether as straight play, musical or opera. 

There’s the Elizabethan play, The Tragical History and Life of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, and Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann. There have been pure operatic versions titled Faust by Charles Gounod and Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito. There’s La Damnation de Faust by Hector Berlioz in the form of operatic concert, and there’s an orchestra concert version titled Faust Symphony by Franz Liszt.

And there’s the cinematic version, the 1926 classic black-and-white silent film Faust directed by German director F.W. Murnau.

So, if audience members have become familiar with the story, it’s more on how Gomez and Artadi meld Wolfgang’s 30 songs into the modern local adaptation.

Artadi, in an earlier message to TheDiarist.ph, said, “I saw it for the first time (during technical dress rehearsal) on Wednesday (prior to opening weekend) in full, costumes and everything, and I did cry.  Not like a baby but tears started rolling down my face.  Because I couldn’t believe I was seeing it and it was happening.  There are no words to describe what I’m feeling.”

Wolfgang lead guitarist Manuel Legarda, on Messenger, said, “I enjoyed the show immensely.  I think anyone familiar with Wolfgang will be thoroughly surprised with how the songs have been reimagined for Si Faust. The whole production team did an excellent job in bringing this to life on stage.”

Legarda was hands-on in the musical arrangement of the songs. He said about 80-90 percent of the guitar accompaniment was re-recorded by him.  

We are reminded of what the 19th century literary and art critic, Walter Pater, said about such experience: “All art constantly aspires to the condition of music.”

Which brings us to the realization how Si Faust unknowingly set a new standard in creating an original, homegrown rock opera. Gomez and Artadi are the new co-creators we look forward to. 

So what’s next? Si Faust, Part 2?

A third weekend, two-show extension could be enough for now but a rerun in a bigger venue with a live band should be next. Dr. Jerry Respeto told us that is actually the plan at the soonest possible time, depending on the availability of the actors. The 800-seat Hyundai Hall, where Bar Boys the Musical is simultaneously being staged, is the perfect venue. 

Because the excitement is just catching up. 

Just like how Artadi, after finishing a song in a bar gig or in a concert, would scream to the audience wanting for more: ’Tangina, sigaw na, pare!”

RELATED STORIES:

Pepe Smith, in his own words, one more time

Theater wunderkind Nelsito Gomez collaborates with Basti Artadi in Wolfgang musical