Evita 2018

Evita 2018 refers to Evita the Musical, held at Sydney Opera House. Jack was busied with Evita from June 2018 until December 2018, while the show travelled to Melbourne for early 2019 performances.

María Eva Duarte, better known as María Eva Duarte de Perón, Eva Perón and Evita, was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. At 15 in 1934, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.

Based on the incredible true story, Eva (Evita) Peron, starts out life as a poor girl who goes on to become an actress and then become the wife of the president of Argentina. Her awe-inspiring funeral, attended by seven million devoted followers, is the opening to the musical, with the narrator then brining the story back by over a decade, explaining how a B-movie actress became the object of such controversial devotion.

Trapped and bored with her family in rural Argentina in the late 1930s, Eva Duarte convinces a womanising musician  to take her with him, back to the capital city, Buenos Aires, where she is determined to become a star. After being abandoned by the musician, Eva endures humiliations and poverty before using her feminine wiles to climb the ladder of the city's entertainment scene, eventually becoming a well-paid radio and film actress.

At a benefit to aid the victims of an earthquake she meets Colonel Juan Perón, an ambitious politician with designs on the presidency. They fall in love and Eva encourages his plans to become dictator of the country, even using her star power to get him released from prison when his enemies order his arrest. On February 24 1946, Perón is elected president with a huge majority, but it quickly becomes apparent that its his glamorous wife who's the focus of the people's love.

Affectionately nicknamed 'Evita' by her millions of devoted followers, Eva founds a huge charity to alleviate the suffering of the nation's poor. Throughout it all, the beautiful first lady is dressed in the latest high fashion and she is accused of being a distraction for the people, rather than an aid, by the embittered and cynical narrator (Antonio Banderas.) With millions of people still utterly devoted to her, Evita continues to appear in public, dazzling her supporters and infuriating her enemies, despite being secretly consumed with terminal cancer. At the end of the musical, she dies, aged 33, resulting in hysterical mourning throughout Argentina.

The musical is famous for a number of songs, including the satirical "Oh what a circus!" "Buenos Aires," "Rainbow High," "The Money Kept Rolling In" and the show's signature solo, "Don't cry for me, Argentina." For the movie version, a new solo was added for Evita, "You must love me."