Evita (Lupone) [Us Import] [Soundtrack]

This recording is realized by that 1979 Broadway cast. The leading lady here is Patti LuPone, who was the perfect choice for the role. She portrayed Eva Peron as Tim Rice's lyrics intended it: big, egocentric and full of passion. I first heard her in the London recording of Lloyd Webber's Sunset Blvd and was amazed and thrilled with her performance and vocal abilities and have been a fan ever since. LuPone's main asset is her voice, capable of hitting the highest of notes and showing incredible range and ability to portray various emotions with it, which is even more evident in Sunset Blvd than in Evita. Sure, she screams a lot on this recording, but that's how the authors wanted Evita to be. Only in "Don't cry for me Argentina" and "Lament" does her voice become sad and vulnerable. She remains, with Elaine Paige, the best interpreter of the role so far. She well deserved her Tony Award for her performance as Evita in 1979. She sings Evita as it is intended, since the key had to be lowered for Madonna in the movie version, due to her limited vocal abilities.

Mandy Patinkin as Che is not so bad, although I must say his voice sounds to me a little bit weak and too high. David Essex in the London highlights album was much stronger. Bob Gunton (who superbly played the crooked warden in "The Shawshank redemption" TV movie) was a perfect match for the role of Peron. His voice has a much needed sinister touch, even though it took me a while to get used to his Spanish pronunciation of the letter R.

The score is simply wonderful, varying from Latino rhythms ("On this night of a thousand stars"; "Buenos Aires") to beautiful ballads ("I'd be surprisingly good for you", "Another suitcase in another hall") and powerful ensemble numbers like "A new Argentina", "Peron's latest flame" or "Santa Evita". Of course, the absolute showstopper is one of the best songs Lloyd Webber has ever written, "Don't cry for me Argentina", performed beautifully by LuPone. If you've heard the movie version with Madonna first, you might be slightly disappointed with the orchestra on this recording, since it is much smaller and therefore lacks the epic sound of the movie soundtrack. One of my main complaints about this CD is its sound quality, which isn't too great since it was made in 1990. They could have remastered it by now.

The lyrics of Tim Rice are some of his best work ever; however the problem is the lack of historical accuracy. As a historian I became very interested in Eva Peron's life story so I did some research after seeing the movie. As one of the reviewers here mentioned, the authors based their entire work on a single book called EVITA: THE WOMAN WITH A WHIP by Mary Main. It was based on rumors, lies and myths, written with the single purpose of slandering Eva Peron as much as possible. It contains no footnotes and no bibliography. The authors used it mainly because it was one of the few books available on the subject in the English language during the 70-is. So one should be very careful in making any conclusions based on the musical or the movie alone.

I recommend this recording to anyone who wants to hear how Evita was intended to sound on stage and, naturally, to all the people interested in quality musical theatre. If you are looking for the definite stage recording, this is the one to get.