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As a Lloyd Webber favourite returns, Michael Coveney reveals how a game of football, rather than world politics, inspired the musical about Eva Perón
A few days after Evita opened at the Prince Edward Theatre on 21 June 1978, Argentina's football team won the World Cup in Buenos Aires, beating Holland 3-1 in a theatrical atmosphere made doubly unforgettable by the storm of blue-and-white ticker tape that flooded the arena at the final whistle.
The two events were curiously interrelated. It was a glorious high summer in London, and the first-night crowd had dressed down in summer suits and floral dresses. They went into the show humming the tunes, as the white-sleeved double album had been a bestseller for more than a year, and '"Don't Cry for Me Argentina', a lush, soaring, strangely ambivalent confession of a leader's relationship with her adoring public, hauntingly sung by Julie Covington, had become a surprise UK chart-topping single in February 1977.
© Independent News and Media Limited
