More than a hundred years since it was first written and first staged, the Filipino zarzuela Walang Sugat (meaning “no wound”) still rouses its audiences to rave-level applause. 

The zarzuela, locally known as “sarsuwela,” is a musical theater genre that originated in Spain in 1657 and was introduced by the Spaniards for their entertainment in the Philippines. It was indigenized by local artists for their own communities, staging it with the basic elements: drama with sung dialogues and/or songs in the local language, dances and comic scenes. The first complete zarzuela performed in the Philippines was in 1851 (as noted by the writer Mario Quijano Axle).  

The Walang Sugat libretto was written in 1898 by Severino Reyes with its music originally composed by Fulgencio Tolentino. It was first staged in 1902, during the early American regime. 

The story is set in 1896, the year the Katipuneros or Filipino revolutionaries declared war against the Spanish regime. In the brewing chaos, childhood sweethearts Tenyong and Julia keep their love secret. They are worlds apart. Tenyong is of apparent peasant parentage while Julia is of the elite ilustrado class.

Tenyong’s father dies after torture by the enemies, and his mother also dies in anguish. To avenge his father’s death, Tenyong joins the revolutionary forces. He bids goodbye to Julia, who reluctantly lets him go and gifts him with her locket as a memento. 

While Tenyong is in the jungle fastness among freedom fighters, Julia is cajoled by her widowed mother to wed Miguel, scion of the wealthy widower Tadeo. Julia writes a letter to Tenyong notifying him of her impending wedding to Miguel. Lucas, Tenyong’s trusted assistant, brings the letter to Tenyong, who receives it just before a skirmish.  He can only tell Lucas to inform Julia that he will return to her. 

Meanwhile, frustrated by the long wait and uncertain of Tenyong’s fate in battle, Julia bends to her mother’s pressure to marry Miguel. 

At the church’s parvise, Julia and Miguel, their parents, their entourage and well-wishers wait for the nuptial Mass to commence. Suddenly, Tenyong arrives, appearing to be wounded and dying. He expresses his death wish: to marry Julia. Faithful to the traditional belief that a dying man’s wish must be fulfilled, Miguel gives way, assured that Tenyong would lose his breath and his, Miguel’s, marriage with the supposed newly-widowed Julia would then follow. 

Surprise of all surprises: After the priest solemnizes the union of Tenyong and Julia, Tenyong reveals that he is not wounded after all. Walang Sugat! 

Restaging and repeat performances

A decade after its 2012 restaging at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Walang Sugat went onstage again under the direction of Alegria O. Ferrer with musical arrangement by Josefino Toledo. Instrumental music was provided by keyboardist Michelle Nicolasora and the Padayon Rondalla. This recent revival was produced by the University of the Philippines (UP) through its Office for Initiative in Culture and the Arts, Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development through the Outright Research Grant, the UP College of Music, and recently in partnership with Paco Park in Manila. 

This production version premiered on Nov. 28–29, 2024, with matinee and gala shows at the Benito Sy Pow Auditorium of UP Diliman’s College of Architecture. Succeeding performances were held on campus, with the final show on March 7, 2025, at the Camerata outdoor stage of UP College of Music. Last May 23, Paco Park co-produced it as a summer night show for its open-air stage. 

The premier shows in UP Diliman were challenged by sound-system facilities at the Benito Sy Pow Auditorium (the rehabilitation of the College of Music’s Abelardo Hall had yet to be completed), but the cast and production team pulled through with a fine performance of the delicacy of romance in the time of war.    

The audience beholds the mise-en-scène of minimal design and vintage ambiance. On stage left (of audience), a wooden rocking chair and a wooden table are placed by a panel of capiz shells. Farther left are vintage-themed chairs and music sheet stands, apparently for the rondalla musicians. On the opposite side of the stage is a wooden sala set—two chairs and a table. These icons of antiquity define the Spanish colonial period setting as well as the social class of the homeowners, the affluent principalia.  

Interestingly, on centerstage is a LED projection screen like a mural wall, a high-tech prop. The audience is thus ensconced within a sphere of converging time periods as symbolized by the juxtaposed stage props—the inner reality of the historical dramatic narrative and its theatrical rendition in the present time. The scene is defined by the picture onscreen—changing from the interior of a Filipino ancestral wooden house to its exterior, church façade for action on its front yard, a hut in the forest signifying the revolutionaries’ headquarters, and a series of tropical flora for intimate love scenes. The dainty directorial style is evident in the magnified imaging of Philippine blossoms.

Embroidery and flirtation

An elderly lady is asleep on the rocking chair. Julia and three other young ladies each hold a bastidor (circular wooden embroidery frame) with a small fabric. They are embroidering handkerchiefs. Embroidered initials, ANF in red satin thread, are flashed on the LED screen. Julia and her friends, the bordaderas (embroiderers), sing an ode to the handkerchief, Ang Karayom kung Iduro (When the needle is pricked)—a glorious affirmation of her affection for Tenyong, whose initials (ANF, for his full name, Antonio Narciso Flores) she is embroidering.  

Julia, essayed on that gala night by soprano Daniella Silab, renders full-bodied lilting melodies that highlight the chorus of coy bordaderas who, giggling, tease the lovestruck yet reserved Julia. When Tenyong arrives and sees the handkerchief with his initials, she denies that it is for him.  

The lovers engage in subtle flirtation—tampuhan and lambingan. He appears slighted by her mention of the friar as the recipient of the delicate memento. Eventually, she assures him that indeed it is for him, her beloved. They pledge their love in an ardent duet, Huwag mong silaban (Don’t fight). Tenyong, as performed by Diego Alcudia, is both expressive and gallant toward the sweet Julia. The tone of Filipino romance is set.  

When his father dies due to incarceration and torture by the enemies, and his mother also perishes in her despair, the troubled Tenyong resolves to avenge his father’s death. Alcudia’s distinctive Filipino voice is convincing in his rage while singing Dalawang Braso—clear and rich timbre, realistic nuanced acting pulsed on timely dramatic moments. 

In the lover’s farewell song, Hirap at Ginhawa, both Alcudia and Silab evince the chemistry of commitment of Tenyong and Julia. It is not just their love for each other that matters; deeply so, they sacrifice their love for love of Inang Bayan (the motherland). As they hold hands, embrace, and assure each other with gestures of love and longing, they are engulfed in an ambiance of flowers—displayed up close onscreen: gumamela, calachuchi, ylang-ylang, santan, adelfa, honeysuckle, and sampaguita—but in black and white. A sweet but heartrending farewell. 

The singing of Constancio de Guzman’s Bayan Ko is a poignant scene. Paula, essayed by Krista Clarise del Rosario, is dignified with her dulcet rendition of the song as photographs and paintings of Filipino resistance against foreign invaders—Spaniards, Americans, Japanese, the current Chinese threats—are projected onscreen. Among the other portraits are the martyred Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora, Andres Bonifacio and the Katipuneros, the execution of Jose Rizal, the Barasoain Church (site of the first Philippine Congress), Filipino revolutionary leader Miguel Malvar and his comrades, icons of American military might, Filipino guerilla fighters, Japanese soldiers raising their weapons in victory, and Chinese vessels on Philippine seas. 

Paula foregrounds this historic montage and inspires through her aria of nostalgia and patriotism. Wholly, Alegria Ferrer’s directorial vision of this provocative sequence pierces viewers’ hearts. 

Comic relief…

Traditional sarsuwela scripts contain comic scenes for an uplift. Two couples grace the drama with comic relief.  There are the oldies Juana (Julia’s widowed mother) and Tadeo (widower father of Miguel); and Lukas (Tenyong’s trusted assistant) and Monika (Julia’s close-in helper), the younger pair. Juana (Ritz de la Cruz) and Tadeo (Danny Monte) are delightful in their flirtatious banter. Tadeo is a persistent suitor and Juana is a graceful and vivacious lady love who’s flattered but does not easily yield. The oldies’ ticklish romance flows seamlessly with their lively performance of Di Bawal ang Umibig.   

Lukas (Ezequiel Camporedondo) is mildly clownish. Light-footed and limber, he amuses the audience with his ways of impressing the charming Monika (Athena Macatangay), who is daintily supple in her moves. Their rendezvous reveals the songs of their hearts. They fluidly convey a marvelous comic romance. 

…And love’s language 

The mournful song Paalam is a lover’s farewell. Tenyong, struggling to breathe, takes his leave: Paalam na mahal kong hirang, malapit na akong pumanaw (My beloved, my death is nigh), pangako’y tinupad ko lamang, mailigtas ka nang lubusan (I just fulfilled my promise, to save you wholly)… 

Julia pleads: Huwag mo sana ‘kong iwanan, isama mo ako sa libingan (Don’t leave me, bring me with you to the grave)… 

Both: Salamat giliw niyaring buhay, hindi kita malilimutan, ako ay tanging iyo lamang, pag-ibig na walang hanggan (Thank you sweet love of my life, I will never forget you, I am only yours, forever love). 

The lovers’ mellifluous vow is strung in the floral portraits onscreen—intense in their hues, green ylang-ylang, orange santan, yellowbells, pink gumamela, white sampaguita—dissolving the previously dim floral parade as the lovers’ sung elegy flows and fades away in tearful embrace.  

Alcudia and Silab pull this through without histrionics, in graceful interlocking passion and pain of separation, moment by moment. The lovers in embrace are highlighted against the virtual mural of the sampaguita (jasmine)—a Filipino icon of purity.  

Kudos to director Ferrer’s conjuring of the poetics and semiotics of the flower as love’s language.   

Historical context 

Love is contextualized in Philippine revolutionary history. Severino Reyes in 1898 was clear of his time setting for the love story of Julia and Tenyong at the beginning of the Philippine Revolution in 1896. For the restaging in 2024 and 2025, Ferrer indeed situates these characters in that past revolution. But she extends linear historical time to the present through the virtual images of the Filipino struggle for more than a hundred years.  

Love, the romantic kind, is intrinsic in human social dynamics. It is immortalized as of the “forever kind” in the inner reality of Walang Sugat as manifested by Tenyong’s enduring love for Julia, who could not wait for him. 

Audiences are misty-eyed or giggly at the dramatic feats and fun and frolic of lovers in courtship onstage. Sensual Filipino expressions of love through drama, comedy, songs and choreographed actions in Walang Sugat resonate to us at present. We see the lovers physically, and indirectly feel Tenyong and the Katipuneros fighting against the Spaniards through the character’s dialogues. The war is theatrically an absent presence.  

Director Ferrer, however, does not stop at Severino Reyes’ subtlety. Dramaturgically, she pushes us to see ourselves in this paradoxical reality through theatrical and filmic images: love in the flesh—a living presence in a time of war, not just in 1896 but across the generations through the slide show of larger-than-life scenes of successive wars against the colonizers—Spanish, American, Japanese and now, in the offing, Chinese.  This juxtaposition of the living aura of lovers against a mural backdrop of the looming tensions of nations in conflict impresses the pressing reality of the specter of war.   

The finale and curtain calls proceed with a succession of onscreen images of wars past and Filipino heroism and victories. Toward the end, we also see familiar media photos of Filipino civilians on boats protesting Chinese incursions in the West Philippine Sea as well as the courageous Filipino coast guards protecting our waters and confronting the Chinese bullies. 

Music critic Antonio Hila praised the show as a “stirring staging.” This writer thinks of it as indeed soul-stirring, and more: riveting and provocative, kind of a call to arms.  

In her Walang Sugat lecture at UP Tacloban College on Feb. 28, 2025, Ferrer ironically declared: “We should disabuse ourselves from saying Walang Sugat! Kasi may sugat tayo. Because we are really wounded. So, we must fight! Fight on!” Her statement blurs the lines between theater and life, and endless love in a time of seemingly endless war.

Joycie Dorado Alegre is a retired associate professor at the Communication Arts program of the University of the Philippines Tacloban College, where she taught art studies, theater arts, and film for 40 years. Her critical reviews on dance, theater and film have been published in national newspapers. She holds a master’s degree in performance studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. UP named her University Artist (2022-2024) in recognition of her work as theater director of the UP An Balangaw Performing Arts Group.