Audio Samples "You Must Love Me" wav au QuickTime Streaming Audio "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" wav au QuickTime Streaming Audio Check out Warner Bros. Records for more clips from the soundtrack and other good stuff, too.

"When we first started recording in London in October of last year, I think we were all very daunted by the mad mountain we had decided to climb. All of us came from very different worlds -- from popular music, from movies, and from musical theater -- and so we were very apprehensive. But hopefully, after nearly 500 hours of recording, we have all inspired one another into creating something very special." Acclaimed director Alan Parker's appraisal of the challenge of recording the music for the most adventurous and complex musical adaptation ever put on film reflects the sheer scale of the task at hand. Evita, the movie, a Cinergi/Robert Stigwood/Dirty Hands Production produced by Robert Stigwood, Alan Parker and Andrew G. Vajna and released in the U.S. by Hollywood Pictures, has at its heart the music and lyrics of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, now released as EVITA: The Complete Motion Picture Music Soundtrack on Warner Bros. Records. Featuring Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce and Jimmy Nail, the soundtrack was a year and a half in the making and provides the backbone of a movie that has taken more than 20 years to bring to the screen. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's classic musical work tells the story of Eva Perón, the peasant girl who rose to become the political and spiritual leader of Argentina as well as one of the most famous women in the world, only to tragically die of cancer at the young age of 33. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber had originally conceived and executed Evita as a complete, cohesive, conceptual recording (as they had done with their previous collaboration, Jesus Christ Superstar). The album was released in Britain in November of 1976. The single release of "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina," sung by Julie Covington, had gone to number one in the British charts a month earlier. The Evita album went straight to the top of the British charts, too, followed by the single of Barbara Dickson's rendition of "Another Suitcase in Another Hall." The record's success spurred Robert Stigwood to produce the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice production of Evita for the London stage, featuring Elaine Paige in the title role. The show opened at the Prince Edward Theatre on June 21, 1978, and it became one of the greatest musical theater hits ever seen in London. By the time it closed, Evita had played 2,900 performances in the West End, and the Broadway production of the musical walked off with seven Tony Awards at the end of its first season in New York. The acclaimed music and lyrics of Evita remain at the heart of Alan Parker's new film. Says Parker: "From the outset, we had decided that the film would be completely 'sung through' to tell the story with music and images, a modern opera -- however risky this might be -- but done in a naturalistic, honest way, as if I were doing a normal dramatic film. Most importantly, the music had to stand alone and be as relevant to contemporary audiences as the original had been when Andrew and Tim first conceived it." Charged with the challenge of this new and different musical emphasis was musical supervisor David Caddick: "Obviously, what can be accomplished on stage doesn't always translate to film. Someone singing at the top of his or her lungs in upper register on screen would simply be overwhelming. The trick is to bring everything down, to a more intimate and conversational level." Or, as John Mauceri, the celebrated orchestra conductor of Evita, eloquently puts it: "On film, it's different than being on stage because the person on the screen in front of you is never farther than someone on the pillow in bed next to you." Says Parker: "The hardest work that anyone had to do was obviously done by Madonna. She had the lion's share of the piece, singing as she does on almost every track. Many of the songs were comfortably within her range, but much of the score was in a range where her voice had never ventured before. Also, she was determined to sing the score as it was written and not to cheat in any way." To this end, David Caddick suggested to Madonna that she work with the esteemed vocal coach Joan Lader in the months prior to the initial recording. Says Caddick: "Essentially, she had to go back to square one and learn to sing in a whole new way. The wide range of the music would take her voice to places it had never been, and she quickly proved equal to the task. She had the natural ability to reach the highs and lows required, but it demanded an enormous amount of training and practice. Her voice now has a bell-like purity which compels you to listen." Adds Parker: "Believe me, this is not a woman who messes around with half-measures. She made up her mind from the outset to really go for it and sing it as it is, or not get on the plane and come to London. Fortunately for all of us, she achieved the former." Recording began in London on October 2, 1995. Music producer Nigel Wright remembers the early days: "Originally, wherever possible, the principal singers sang along with the full orchestra or rhythm band to get the feel and tempo of each piece. Then they would go off with Alan and David in a more intimate recording environment and perfect the vocals." Says Parker: "I used to sit in the control booth with my script in my lap, wondering how all the decisions that we were making then, in a cozy recording studio, would relate to being ankle-deep in Argentinean cow dung with a hundred film crew members making the actual movie. During rehearsals, Madonna insisted on acting out each scene whilst singing, so that everything would be as real as possible. I remember her dragging Jimmy Nail around the studio, with hand-held mikes, knocking each other about, and giving the vocal engineer, Dave Reitzas, a heart attack. We were all in unknown musical territory and it was hard to know if we hadn't all gone mad." The narrator of the piece, Antonio Banderas (in the role of Ché), has had a long history with the project: "When I first moved to Madrid as a young actor, I had a cheap room which was in a building next to a theater. As it happens, they were performing Evita. Every night, as I was trying to sleep, I would hear the music come through the wall at one-thirty in the morning. The whole wall was moving in the more noisy numbers. I couldn't sleep at all. So I was cursing, you know, 'Shut up!' So I think I have this music in my skin already." Adds Parker: "I saw an Evita audition tape of Antonio which he'd done when he first came to America. I was always a big fan of his from seeing the films he did with Pedro Almodovar. So when I heard how well he sings, well, it took about 15 seconds to know he was Ché." Jonathan Pryce plays Juan Perón. Winner of a Tony for his role as "The Engineer" in Miss Saigon, and winner of the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for Carrington, Jonathan has credentials which speak for themselves. Pryce tells of being on location in Argentina: "In Buenos Aires, I heard all these fans screaming outside my window every night. Even though it kept me awake, it was very flattering -- until I realized that they were screaming for Madonna." One of the stand-out songs from the album and film was not part of the original score or show. Says Parker: "In my script, I had completely reorganized the final act, cutting out much of the rambling, theatrical recitative and hoping that Andrew and Tim would replace it with a more succinct new song. Getting the two of them in a room to collaborate after all these years wasn't easy, but finally they succumbed." The result, which in essence and genesis propels the narrative of the film, turned out to be, in isolation, an extraordinarily beautiful, bittersweet love song. This new song, "You Must Love Me," is the first single release from the album. Adds Parker: "I think Madonna likes this song the most. Firstly because it's new, and secondly because she sings it so beautifully, it becomes hers. And hers alone."