The energy of Catalan rock returns to Barcelona with "Cop de Rock"

Fifteen years after its original premiere at the Teatre Victòria by Dagoll Dagom, the musical Cop de Rock returns to Barcelona in a new stage led by the Osona production company La Barca. The show arrives in the city after achieving resounding success at L'Atlàntida de Vic, where it sold out all tickets and attracted more than 4,200 spectators in six performances.

In the upcoming season, it will be installed at the Teatre Coliseum from September 3 to 6 to offer a journey through the soundtrack of an entire generation.

Cop de Rock, a musical in Catalan about love, friendship and the passage of time

The plot of the work is divided into two eras to show us how songs end up marking our own history and that of a country. In the first part, a group of young people from a town on the Costa Brava form the band that gives the work its name. Their lives are transformed with the arrival of three girls from the Terres de l'Ebre who are celebrating a bachelorette party.

The second part takes a temporal leap in which the audience reunites with the characters years later. Distance and life have separated them, but they are forced to reunite in a critical situation. This will open the door to second chances and the management of past wounds.

With the original set design by Dagoll Dagom

The return of this musical is marked by generational change and respect for the classic staging. Joan Lluís Bozzo, director of the original work and author of the script, has shown his support for the new team: "It is a show very faithful to ours, but with a perfectly comparable level. I am very excited that they think that the musical in Catalan is a genre that must be defended." In fact, Bozzo has defined Catalan rock as a living treasure, a living national treasure."

As a sign of this transfer of power, Dagoll Dagom has ceded the original set design by Alfons Flores. The rocky structures that we saw in 2011 return to the stage: rocks that refer both to the wordplay with the title of the piece ("roc"), and to the landscapes of Empordà. Now, however, they have been adapted to the characteristics of the Teatre Coliseum thanks to the technical team completed by Miquel Tur (sound), David Parera (lighting) and Gerard Preseguer (stage management).

A musical full of young talent

One of the strong points of the new production is the commitment to young talent: on stage there is a team with an average age of around 25 years. "It's a spectacular breeding ground. What is said about us being a family is true, and the motivation among us is enormous," Bardolet told us in a brief interview he granted us. When facing the leading role, the actor wanted to offer his own perspective regarding the interpretation made by Roger Berruezo in 2011: "Roger is also a very... handsome, tall actor. I perhaps looked for a slightly more sensitive side in him. Roger presented himself as a somewhat frivolous character in his relationships with girls, and I try to enhance the part where Luna breaks his schemes."

The great challenge of this version of Cop de Rock is to remain faithful to the original spirit of 2011 but adding the nuances of a young company, because theater is a living art that evolves. To achieve this essence, the production has relied on Laia Sors, who has been in charge of completely rethinking the original choreographies to adapt them to the new energy of the company. In the same way, the musical repertoire also remains faithful to the arrangements that Antoni Ten created at the time for the Dagoll Dagom company.

The success achieved in Vic is a great stimulus to make the leap to the capital. "In Vic, the audience left amazed, completely devoted," Bardolet recalls during the interview. With their minds already set on the September premiere, the protagonist admits that they are "counting the days for the moment to arrive" and that the wait is being experienced as "a collective energy boost."

Jofre Bardolet and the production company La Barca

At the helm of the project we find the family production company La Barca, led by Jofre Bardolet, who in this production takes on the production, musical direction, and the leading role (Roc). Bardolet explained to us how he manages this workload: "Taking hours from wherever, basically. It's a production that is personally very demanding, it's a challenge. I do it because I believe a lot in the project, I believe a lot in the team and we believe it's worth making this enormous, titanic effort."

Bardolet is a trained orchestra conductor, which is why he saw it as natural to take on the musical baton, a job that is already well underway from the tour in Vic: "The musicians are machines, absolutely (...) Since we've already done it six times in Vic, it already works. Therefore, most of my musical direction work is already done; it needs to be polished and rehearsed, but we are not starting from scratch." This has allowed him to focus his efforts on production.

Bardolet highlights the great intergenerational power of a repertoire that never goes out of style: "It evidently appeals a lot to people around 45 years old, because it was the music of their youth," he explains.

Musicals in Catalan, an endangered species in Barcelona

The presentation of this new show has also served to bring to the table an uncomfortable debate: the lack of prominence of the Catalan language in the capital's major theaters. Currently, the large-format billboard in Barcelona is practically dominated by major international productions translated into Spanish, which is why the Cop de Rock team wanted to make a plea in defense of autochthonous musical theater.

Joan Lluís Bozzo himself has shown his enthusiasm that a regional, family, and young production company has taken up the baton to bring a classic in Catalan back to the city: "I am very excited that they think that the musical in Catalan is a genre that must be defended," acknowledged the director of Dagoll Dagom, who sees in this project a ray of hope against the decline of the language on commercial stages. For Bozzo, Catalan rock songs are a collective heritage that must be protected and revived.

"It is fundamental to continue betting on theater and musicals in Catalan; we must reclaim our language and our culture on the big stages"

Júlia Cervera Marsó, the show's stage director, expressed herself along the same lines, reminding that programming works like this is an act of resistance and cultural reaffirmation. "It is fundamental to continue betting on theater and musicals in Catalan; we must reclaim our language and our culture on the big stages," she expressed.

The objective of La Barca is for the stay at the Coliseum to serve as a springboard to start a tour that will take them across the entire country in the coming months. For now, the mandatory appointment is in Barcelona.