Madonna Talks About the Role of a Lifetime "It was much more than a role in a movie. It was exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. And it was the farthest I've ever had to push myself creatively. At every level, I had a great education." The exhilarated, intimidated, and educated speaker is none other than Madonna, and the subject, of course, is her long-awaited, much-discussed, years-in-the-making starring role in Evita, Alan Parker's film adaptation of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's epic musical of the life and times of Argentina's beloved Eva Perón. Evita also stars Antonio Banderas as Ché, the film's narrator; Jonathan Pryce as Juan Perón; and Jimmy Nail as Agustín Magaldi. Yet despite the A-list lineup of talent assembled for Evita, both in front of and behind the camera, the focus of international attention on the production has been, from the very beginning, the star in the title role. To say that Evita is a role Madonna was born to play may be overstating the case. For an artist still, after nearly 20 years, at the height of her career, Madonna undoubtedly has many perfectly tailored roles ahead of her. But there's no question that the story of Evita -- the myth, the legend, the larger-than-life persona -- could only have been done justice by someone with similar qualifications. "What drew me to the role from the beginning was the story of this remarkable woman," Madonna reveals. "Where she came from, how she came up in the world, the incredible amount of influence she had over an entire country and the impact she had on the whole world . . . truth really is stranger than fiction." The truth Madonna set out to bring to the big screen chronicles the life of Eva Ibarguren (Duarte), the illegitimate daughter of an Argentine estancia manager, who began her life in a small, dusty town lost in the Argentine Pampas. As a teenager, she became involved with the tango singer Agustín Magaldi, whom she accompanied to Buenos Aires. Her success as a radio and film actress there, coupled with her ambition and charisma, introduced her to the most influential circles of Argentine society, where she met and fell in love with rising political star Colonel Juan Perón. In 1945 the couple married, and Eva campaigned at Perón's side, helping to secure his presidential victory. Eva subsequently threw herself into good works, as the myth of "Evita" took root in the hearts and imaginations of the common people whom she tirelessly championed. Her vice-presidential ambitions were thwarted by growing opposition from the military, and ultimately by her own deteriorating health. She died tragically of cancer in 1952, at only 33 years of age. "I think previous portrayals of Eva Perón have been rather one-dimensional," asserts Madonna. "She's always been painted as a power-hungry girl from the sticks who rose to power and took full advantage of her position before she died. It's a very connect-the-dots version and never seemed to reach the real human being behind the myth. Which is what I wanted to do in the movie." But finding the flesh-and-blood Evita was only the first of many challenges facing Madonna as she undertook the enormous task of bringing both the character and this movie musical to life. "There have been lots of different versions of this play," she explains, "with cast recordings by everyone from Patti LuPone to Elaine Page to Julie Covington. All of whom are sopranos and sing in a whole different range than I do. So I really didn't have that much to guide me musically going in. On top of that, Andrew Lloyd Webber's score is very difficult and demanding. So the first step was to work on singing in upper registers and to develop a wider range for my voice." Assisting in the process was Evita Musical Supervisor David Caddick and vocal coach Joan Lader. "Eventually," Madonna continues, "we did lower the keys on a couple of songs, but for the most part we kept them up where they had originally been written." But that decision, in turn, created new problems. "I think that in putting a stage production on film, you have to be careful to keep the music and singing from overpowering the audience. You can very easily get into screeching the songs, and what I was most concerned with was making Evita less of a bully and more of a human being. Because the entire movie is sung instead of spoken, it has an operatic quality, which implies an over-the-top delivery. I was going after something much more naturalistic." The solution to transforming the broad gestures of the stage into the subtler nuances of film was, she reveals, "to dial everything down. Because the story is sung, we wanted to make sure every word could be understood. But beyond that, it was important that audiences could enjoy the musical experience, which meant that we had to make an intimate, emotional connection at the same time that we were acting and trying to hit our notes. It was an experience that I think has had a real impact on the other aspects of my singing. In the course of training I wrote 'One More Chance' and 'You'll See,' and if you listen to those songs, you can hear how I was trying to absorb and utilize what I was learning." Essential to bringing Evita's unique mix of music and drama together was director Alan Parker, who not only directed the film, but also directed Madonna in the exquisitely expressive video for the first single, "You Must Love Me," in which he incorporates visually stunning images from the film. "I was delighted to be working with Alan for a number of reasons. First, he's steeped in the movie music genre, from his first film, Bugsy Malone, through projects like Fame, The Commitments, and Pink Floyd: The Wall. He understands the art form better than any other director I know. But he's also got a great dramatic sense. Movies like Mississippi Burning and Midnight Express were very intriguing political dramas and there's an element of that, of course, in Evita. He also has a wonderful visual style and a way of getting great performances from his actors." For Madonna, the most difficult job was singing in a style far removed from anything else in her pop repertoire. "There are songs that you can separate out from the score that stand on their own," she remarks, "but the biggest challenge was bringing meaning and life to the whole piece. A lot of it we sang with the orchestra in the studio and some we would sing live on the set, especially the scenes that required real emotional interplay. We needed to be together, and not in a studio isolation booth, to make those moments ring true." It was not, the superstar reveals, a seamless process. "A lot of times, in the sheer truth of the moment, I felt like we were really connecting. But there were plenty of other times when I'd say to myself, 'What are we doing? What is this? It's not an opera, it's not a musical, it's not even a regular movie. It's just . . . insane!' Because Alan had a rule that we weren't allowed to see the dailies, sometimes I had nothing more to go on than my own inner sense that I had to keep moving forward." And the results? "Time will tell," Madonna remarks, "but I can say that after going through it all . . . everything from trying to sing a whole new way, to learning how to tango, to meeting presidents and bishops to every other detail that needed my full attention, I'm 100% sure no one else could have handled the role." It's an assertion that only Madonna can make -- and make it stick -- in each note and every moment of Evita, the musical and motion picture event of a lifetime. Madonna's Biography