Results: Weird Music Wednesday: The Disco Operas of Alec R. Costadinos

If your only familiarity with 1970's disco music derives from what of it was played on pop radio, your only recognition of Alec R. Costadinos (heretofore to be abbreviated ARC, born Alexandre Kouyoumdjian of Armenian heritage in Cairo) may be for his work as producer--or the alias?--of Love And Kisses for the theme song of the Oscar-winning* 1978 disco'sploitation movie Thank God It's Friday. Before starting this survey, were you familiar with ARC, either under his Love And Kisses guise or otherwise?

Featured in, though not on the soundtrack album of, Thank God It's Friday is an excerpt of ARC's disco adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. Of the play's five acts, its first two fit onto the first side of an LP, while the other three are on the flipside. The album topped Billboard Magazine's chart gauging the most-spun records at U.S. discotheques (I'm unsure whether the trade mag' included any clubs from Montreal in its tallies at the time). For a music thought by its detractors to be brainless and libidinal, are you surprised that anyone working in the form had the ambition to use such classic literature as ARC did for inspiration?

Also from 1978--quite a productive year for Alec--is his interpretation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. Also not formatted for easily editing any given segment for pop radio. it wasn't the hit ARC's Shakespearean predecessor was. Maybe Quasimodo's tale didn't have the (doomed) romantic resonance among dancers and DJ's of a Capulet and a Montague wanting to wed against their parents' wishes. Hunchback's music, however, at least to my ears, is at least equally compelling as that of Romeo & Juliet. Though both disco operatic adaptations may seem unlikely and/or ridiculous, which do you believe is more fitting to such treatment?

If the previous two examples of ARC's disco operatics seem strange, he arguably topped himself in '78 when, under the name Sphinx (perhaps in tribute to his Egyptian birthplace), he released a self-titled album about two biblical figures: Jesus Christ's thrice-denier, Simon Peter, and Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed his presumed Lord for thirty silver coins. Maybe in part because I don't sense blasphemous intent on Costadinos' part, I enjoy his adaptation of Scripture to lush, lofty Eurodisco. But I don't believe Sphinx's album was much of a club hit at the time of its release either. Though disco rooted African American soul gospel vocalizing and sentiments had already proven popular in discos (see my previous survey https://www.tellwut.com/surveys/entertainment/music/126385-dancing-as-unto-the-lord-gospel-club-music.html), it may have been a step too far to expect patrons in decadent discos to want to dance to what are essentially New Testament passages set to thumping beats. Would you dance to this or anything else like it?

To my knowledge, none of ARC's albums excerpted and asked about above were ever made into stage productions. I know that disco of the type Costadinos made no longer has the commercial currency it once did; however, it still seems to me that it could be great theater were any of the above works to fashioned for stage presentation. Which of ARC's flights of fancy would you like to see adapted for the stage (or, arguably more ambitiously, cinema) ?