Evita recordings: completeness of concept album vs American premiere album

[Fan123]

I'm hoping for some advice as I'm not sure which album to buy, and completeness is an important factor for me. According to Amazon, many of the concept album tracks run for significantly longer than their American premiere album counterparts. What is the reason for this? Does the American recording not include the complete show? Were there huge cuts made by the time Evita hit the stage - and is any of the cut material a 'must-have'? Is the difference just due to faster tempos (or...tempi)? Thanks for helping me out.

[CarlosAlberto]

When EVITA was adapted for the stage changes were made to the score (e.g.: songs cut, new songs written, lyrics changed etc.)

The 1976 concept album is complete for what it was up until then just that: a concept album.

The Premiere American Recording is complete for it's stage adaptation.

There are numerous changes and they are well documented elsewhere. A simple Google search would do the trick.

I think you should do yourself a favor and get both. It's interesting to listen and compare the changes between the two.

If you want to dig deeper then pick up the movie soundtrack, where further changes to the piece were implemented.

Go one step further and listen to the 2006 London Cast to listen to the score in it's re-orchestrated version.

Then there's the New Broadway Cast Recording to look forward to this summer.

[kevin5]

definately get the OBC recording with patti lupone, i like the orchastrations alot better then elaine paighe london cast, i definately would NOT get the new broadway cast recording, no life in it if it is anything like it was onstage, elaini rogers cannot belt it like patti and ricki martin is dull, not like mandy

[CarlosAlberto]

@ kevin5: what exactly are orchastrations?

who the hell are elaine paighe, elaini rogers and ricki martin?

fyi: julie covington doesn't belt like Patti LuPone either, that is certainly not a reason to not go ahead and purchase the original 1976 concept album.

It is also not fair to judge the New Broadway Cast Recording as it isn't even recorded or released yet.

[rosscoe(au)]

I love the white album, Julie is perfect.

[adam.peterson44]

"what exactly are orchastrations?"

Orchastrations are the coordinated removal of certain body parts all in the same rhythm.

[EponineAmneris]

The recording with Patti and Mandy handsdown

[Michael Bennett]

I think both albums are pretty essential. The white album is of course the source - and is the most balls to the walls and gutsy. It also reflects the original idea that like SUPERSTAR, EVITA was really originally intended to be a 'rock' opera - musical theatre purists tend to not like Julie Covington's vocals, but I find her astringent rock sound completely effective and exciting for the character.

The OBC reflects all the changes made for the stage and naturally features thrilling (though more conventional) performances from LuPone and Patinkin. I think most also tend to prefer the faster tempos on the recording.

Incidentally, the tempos were apparently sped up slightly to allow the entire show to fit on two records, but Webber was apparently pretty distressed when he discovered that the MD was actually conducting the score at that speed in the theatre (the tempos of the original London Production and the Broadway revival are a lot closer to those on the White Album).

He continuously tried to persuade the MD to perform the show 'as written' but if anything the tempos only got faster as the run went on. If you listen to some of the 'final night' performance clips of LuPone, you can see that the show was performed at such a breakneck speed as to seem almost incomprehensible.

[EponineAmneris]

Keep in mind that they will be releasing the new recording with Elena Roger and Ricky Martin in June. It remains to be seen if it will be complete with changes, but I hope so.

[Mister Matt]

I do enjoy the concept album and don't mind Covington's vocals at all. In fact, I prefer Wilkinson's Che to Patinkin's. But I cannot stand The Lady's Got Potential on the concept album. It was much better with the reworked lyrics in the film (the only improvement the film made to the material, in my opinion).

But as far as overall quality, the OBC with Patti is still my favorite for its theatricality. But if you want the best orchestrations, look no further than the 1980 Madrid recording (sung in Spanish). I wish that had become the standard.

And while we're speaking of Evita recordings, the most bizarre has to be the 1981 Korean cast. I don't know what was going on when they recorded that. It is such a crazy mess. It's even odder than the disco Evita album.

[temms]

It's funny you bring up the tempo issue. I wound up conducting the European tour a few years back (I was hired as the second keyboard player but within a month was made the conductor because so many people quit or were fired. It was a crazy production.) It was a full recreation of the original Prince staging, including all the film projections.

When I took over conducting, a new musical supervisor was brought on board who had crazy, ridiculous notions about the tempos and insisted we change them to what she believed them to be. However, there were places in the show ("Rainbow Tour" in particular) where the film images ran mostly in sync with the music. There was no click track, so you had to guess and try and adjust if you saw that things weren't lining up. It wasn't something where you had to be perfectly in sync, but if you were, some cool things would happen like specific pictures would show up on the downbeats and so on. I took it as a nightly contest to see if I could perfectly nail the "Rainbow Tour" tempo with the film, and I succeeded more often than I didn't.

But new Musical Supervisor Who Knew The Show Better Than Anybody threw loud, angry, convulsive fits about the fact the number was TOO SLOW!!!! It wasn't interesting, it didn't work that way, it was throwing off the whole second half of Act Two, we HAD to pick up the tempo!!! She had conducted the show herself and she knew the original tempos and NEVER, EVER played that song that slowly. (They obviously did not use the films in that production.)

I pointed out to her that we were using the same films from the original production, so I was taking the song at the exact tempo it was done on Broadway in 1979. She claimed that something had to be wrong, that we were using a different film, or that someone had slowed down the film, or something. Every night we had this argument and I had to choose whether to do it at her tempo or mine - and either the Stage Manager would come down on me for taking it too fast and throwing off the sync with the film, or the Musical Supervisor would come down on me for taking it too slow and throwing off the pacing of the second act. She eventually left and I listened to the SM.

But other things she insisted be taken stupidly slow, so much so that the dancers started angrily coming to my dressing room before the show to complain that they were on the verge of injuring themselves, they couldn't do the moves that slowly. I told them that I sympathized, but I was given notes to take things slower and slower and they should take it up with the Supervisor. The poor tango dancers who had to stay frozen in that pose during a glacial "Surprisingly Good For You" - my muscles ached along with theirs. And "Buenos Aires" sounded like I had a stroke on the stand the minute we hit that song because it was so stupidly slow (far slower than even the Concept Album.)

We actually recorded that production, the green Live European tour CD, (but due to an "error" my name was "accidentally" left off the CD and only the Musical Supervisor's was included - if you have the CD, you'll notice they credit a supervisor and a 1st Keyboard player, but no conductor), so you can hear it for yourself if you're curious. There's a lot about that recording I love but much that I would have done differently had I been allowed to.

Sorry for the length, but the tempo discussions brought back a flood of memories. Crazy tour, that one was. Payday was Thursday and there was many a Thursday where a cast member would decide they'd had it, get their check, and then leave the tour without telling anybody and we wouldn't know until it was showtime and we discovered that we no longer had a second soprano, or something. Actors' Boyfriends and Girlfriends who came to visit who were performers themselves sometimes ended up with jobs. Seriously.

[jimmycurry01]

I have noticed some rather different things going on musically on that recording. I do love the Eoro-tour's Che though. There is something different about his performance that I can't quite put my finger on.

[Gaveston2]

No apology necessary, temms. I'm sure I'm not the only one who really enjoyed the detailed "backstage visit".

Everyone else has a scroll bar.

[Reginald Tresilian]

I found your story fascinating, temms.

[smallworld]

The 2002 UK Tour Cast Recording is also an interesting one to listen to. Eva was played by Caren Lyn Manuel, who shines above the rest of the cast in my opinion.

[Mister Matt]

temms - Fascinating! Thank you for sharing. Sounds like a job that certainly never got boring (even if for the wrong reasons).

[temms]

Glad some folk enjoyed my ramblings. You're just enabling me to keep going. Yes, that tour was memorable for all the wrong reasons. The Che on the recording is Nicholas Rodriguez, who has done quite a bit since then. He was Curly in the recent Arena Stage "Oklahoma" and went on as Tarzan on the B'way quite often. He's also an out gay soap star.

I bring up that last point because, he wasn't originally the Che of our production. He was actually playing Jesus in our producer Wolfgang Bocksch's concurrently-running tour of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and to dredge up publicity, concocted a tabloid romance between his Jesus and his Eva (Caren Lyn Manuel) which nobody believed for a second for obvious reasons. Wolfgang made her go to all the JCS opening parties to be photographed, and he came to the Evita openings to be photographed, blah blah blah.

Ticket sales weren't going so well at our first two stops in Munich and Basel, so Wolfgang decided to unceremoniously dump our perfectly capable Che and throw Nicholas into the production to get PR mileage out of two "stars in love" doing the show together. And since he was firing the Che, he decided to fire a bunch of other people for good measure. Well, not fire them exactly. He made very clear that he wasn't "firing anyone." However, in his thickly accented words in a speech to the company, "Some of you won't be playing your parts anymore..."

And so Nicholas took over and sales were good enough in Berlin that we added two weeks and picked up a run in Linz, Austria, where we recorded the album. But by that point everyone was ragged and tired and had been out longer than we'd planned, and several actors were so frustrated with the craziness that they refused to sign recording releases. We recorded the album by splitting the signal from each channel - rather than record it from the theatre's board, we ran each channel both to the board in the house to be mixed live, and also to a remote studio in a truck outside the theatre to be recorded and mixed separately.

None of the first sopranos in the production agreed to the recording, so their mics weren't recorded and we had to have someone come into the studio later to overdub the first soprano on all the ensemble numbers.

In order to generate more publicity midway through the Berlin run, Wolfgang decided to plant a story in the press that Caren's 4-month-old Yorkie Buster had been kidnapped from the theatre. Wolfgang stopped by the theatre to tell us this one night after the show, with Buster right there with us. But it backfired a bit when dozens of people started calling the theatre claiming that they'd seen someone walking with a Yorkie and maybe it was Buster. So they roused Caren out of bed early to have her come in for an emergency presser with the dog to say that everything was fine, the dog was back again, and they made up some story that a soccer fan had been watching the World Cup with the crew in the theatre cantina and swiped the dog, but felt bad and brought him back to the theatre.

I like to think of Wolfgang Bocksch as Werner Klemperer's larger, angrier, flamboyant younger brother who produces musicals. But, as our wise sage of a Stage Manager said once as we were sitting in the office after a show venting about some latest Wolfgang ridiculousness, "If he weren't crazy, we wouldn't even be here in the first place." Which is true - he's a guy who gets a whim to throw up a show, so he gets the original sets and costumes and does it mostly right.

Except in the case of "Evita", the tour regrouped in the fall without me (I had gone on to assistant conduct the "pre-Broadway" production of "Dorian" at Denver Theatre Center), played a few weeks when suddenly Wolfgang just up and disappeared. Nobody in the office could find him - he just packed up all his stuff, and fled. The office didn't know what to do, so they just closed all his shows and sent everybody home. He finally emerged a few weeks later, discovered what had happened, and reportedly threw quite the fit. Not long thereafter word spread that he was arrested for tax evasion, and from there I do not know the rest of the story.

[EricMontreal22]

I'm loving these stories. I had no idea there was a recording of a tour. And no idea that Nicholas Rodriguez, who had a fairly small 4 month role as a gay character on One Life to Live a couple of years back had a theatre past (he was pretty wooden on the soap actually but...)

Matt, I'm curious what's so stranger about the Korean recording? (I actually love the disco Evita--as cheesy as much as it is, it was arranged and produced by Boris Midney who is pretty much one of the best Eurodisco producers).

[Mister Matt]

The Korean recording was notoriously famous for being one of the worst cast recordings for a long time. It's as if the orchestra and the chorus were recorded separately and then layered in another session and at times don't sync up. It was one of the first foreign cast recordings issued on CD, so each CD is one long track (similar to the original Phantom of the Opera CD). I haven't listened to it in ages because it is something of a chore to get through, but it is a fascinating curiosity.

[chewy5000]

I couldn't get past the opening, the singers are all terrible, off pitch, out of sync with the orchestra, it has to be heard to be believed.

[choitoy]

I think a lot of early Korean recordings were a bit off kilter. Has anyone here listened to the Korean "Guys & Dolls"? It sounds like they used two old synthesizers to do all the music, and they interpolated a couple of Korean pop songs (I believe one of the stars from the show was a popular singer), which of course throws off the whole thing.

I have the Korean Evita album, and still have yet to get all the way through it. I'm just glad that Korea is taking their theater a bit more "seriously" (for lack of a better or more appropriate term), and created a quite lovely cast album for Next to Normal and the revamped "Dreamgirls".

Oh, and I think I am the only person on here that really dislikes Julie Covington on the white concept album. I can't put my finger on it, but she doesn't do it for me as Evita.

[EponineAmneris]

I enjoyed reading your posts, temms

[Mister Matt]

Yes, Korea has improved quite a bit since the 80s. The Korean Next to Normal recording is FANTASTIC. The audio quality is superior to the Broadway recording, which has a lot of distortion, which is a real shame.

[PattiLover]

Does anyone know why the Korean cast recording of Evita was so easily available in the states? I bought mine at a now defunct Media Play store in the suburbs of Buffalo. I'd seen it all over for a while. I had to pick it up as a curiosity.

[Mister Matt]

At the time, DRG was really hot releasing tons of wonderful Broadway & Off-Broadway recordings available for the first time on CD and cassette. The flood of stuff they released was golden. However, they only released 2 foreign-language cast recordings. The release of Scarlett (the Japanese cast translation of Harold Rome's Gone With the Wind) sort of made sense because the show itself was a rarity. With no future release of the London recording and the Japanese release being 2 discs, it was definitely a golden nugget for any collector. But their issue of the Korean Evita was extremely odd. You sort of wonder if it was an inside joke after they were still chuckling over Forbidden Broadway Volume 2. Whatever the reason, it worked on me because the moment I saw it, I had to have it out of pure curiosity. And I will say it is still a very "unique" recording. Even the reviews on Amazon are funny.
Amazon.com Reviews

[EponineAmneris]

http://broadwayworld.com/article/Confirmed-New-Broadway-EVITA-Cast-Album-to-Be-2-CD-Set-20120427