Who misses LuPone as Evita?

Interesting Patti Lupone appearance on the Tony's (1981?) where she does a little of Buenos Aires from Evita. She was brought over to Australia to appear in the Sydney production as a stop gap for a couple of months between one exiting Evita and a new one coming in.(To boost interest in the show which was flagging).She took three days leave from the show to fly over for the Tonys (taking her Australian costume with her, it had a fuller skirt which she liked), leaving Oz on the Friday and returning to the show on the Tuesday.

Is she still called 'Hot Lips'?

I also saw Patti in Evita and thought she was wonderful. They still sell the Evita CD. I have recently been listening to it again because I am going to see Mandy Patinkin in concert. He played Che.

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There will never be anyone greater in the role.

i hope Matt_G doesn't prefer Madonna in the role...

Seeing her and Mandy in the original cast was one of the greatest theatre-going experiences of my life. She absolutely took my breath away - ALL the power!

On the subject of Evita, is there any info on who they casted for the Troika tour?

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spiderdj..i'm surprised i credited you with more taste. LOL (just kidding).

Interestingly, Spider, I never listen to the OBC - it's WAY too tied up in the experience of seeing it for me. I do agree with Margo, however, that too much of the impact of the score was lost in the transposition.

I will say that Madonna looked FABULOUS (no other word seems appropriate) in all those costumes.

It's fine Spider, but remember that many Broadway performers won't, can't or don't know how to adjust their stage performance for a recording studio. Lupone's perfomance live was a revelation and didn't seem "way too much" because it was being projected out to one of the largest houses on Broadway (1800 seats). Lupone putting out that same energy and force in a recording studio I guess sounds overwhelming to you listening to it on the cast album, as opposed to Madonna who's entire life is about singing into a microphone in a studio so, of course is going to sound "better" on record (and let's not forget all the "sweetening" and overdubbing and pitch correction they have to do to Madonna's voice in the studio to get it to sound that way; they didn't do those sorts of recording tricks on cast albums in 1980, since they were usually recorded on the cheap -- still are -- so what you're hearing is Lupone's raw unvarnished sound with no softening effects or reverb or anything else that might have made her sound more pleasant to yur ear).

With Madonna, you're getting Evita recorded as a pop album and Madonna giving a performance she could have never begun to replicate in the Broadway Theatre eight times a week (or six, actually, since Opel did Lupone's matinees). With the Lupone recording, you have a record of one of the greatest performances in the history of the musical theatre, preserved for posterity. No compromises were made to make her or anyone else sound more "pop" for the record buying public. It is the same performance Lupone gave in an 1800 seat theatre, unaltered -- if it's too much to your ears listening on headphones then so be it; it was thrilling and powerful and phenomenal seeing it live.

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Spider, I'm not a particularly big fan of Patinkin myself (I know, blasphemy!), but, as you said, that's another thread.

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Opel was the original Evita understudy and took over as matinee Evita during the first year and played the role for those perofrmances for at least a year if not two (remember the show ran for nearly four years).

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