Cinema in Buenos Aires, 26 July 1952 Lyrics – Evita

Song Overview

Review and Highlights

Before any melody takes root, a projector whirs, a melodrama sputters, and a voice cuts through the room. The prologue functions like a siren - a blunt news bulletin that freezes time and drags the audience into national mourning. Lloyd Webber scores it with noir-ish tension that tips straight into the choral threnody of “Requiem for Evita.” Tim Rice’s framing is economical: a single announcement refracts a whole country’s grief and spectacle.

Highlights

• Scene-setting that bites: a cinema’s everyday chatter snaps into silence the moment the announcement lands.
• Form follows function: mostly spoken text over orchestral underscore that hands off cleanly to the Latin-text requiem.
• Historical precision: the time of death is stated, anchoring the musical in a very real date and hour.
• Key takeaway: this isn’t just table-setting. It establishes grief, propaganda, and celebrity as the show’s central triangle.

Creation History

The number originated on the 1976 concept album and was retained for stage, then for the 1979 Broadway premiere album. On film in 1996, the story keeps the same entry point - the cinema interruption - before the requiem swells and Che’s commentary ignites. Onstage, early productions even incorporated a period movie clip to heighten the rupture between melodrama and reality.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

A Buenos Aires audience watches a melodrama. The film jams, complaints rise, and an announcer replaces fiction with a bulletin: Eva Perón has died. The crowd’s shock spills into ritual lament, and the show rewinds to tell how Eva reached that balcony and that myth.

Song Meaning

The prologue is a thesis in miniature. It shows how public life becomes theatre - and how theatre absorbs public life. The message: a nation will perform its grief as much as feel it, and Evita’s legend is born at the intersection of sincerity and spectacle.

Mood: solemn, ceremonial, edged with political theater. Context: 26 July 1952, Buenos Aires. Message: the private fact of a death becomes a public script, choreographed by state power and embraced by the masses.

Annotations

ANNOUNCER

This voice is presented as the Secretary of the Press - bureaucratic, precise, almost anonymized. That neutrality only sharpens the shock.

“....to inform the people of Argentina that Eva Perón, spiritual leader of the nation, entered immortality at 20:25 hours today.”

The phrasing matters. “Spiritual leader” elevates Eva beyond office; “entered immortality” sanctifies a political figure in a single breath. It’s a eulogy masquerading as a memo.

Style and rhythm

The cue leans on underscored speech and ambient cinema sound, then yields to a Latin-text choral plea. It’s not quite aria, not yet chorus - more like a hinge between documentary and oratorio.

Emotional arc

It starts mundane - chatter and film dialogue - and pivots to shock, then ceremony. The lurch from pulp dialogue to requiem signals how quickly private fates become public rites.

Cultural touchpoints

State radio interruptions, Catholic imagery in the requiem, and the cult of personality all inform the scene. The exact time stamped in the announcement reads like history class interrupted by theatre class.

Key phrases

• “Spiritual leader of the nation” - an honorific granted shortly before her death, framing Eva as more than a First Lady.
• “Entered immortality” - a euphemism that canonizes while it informs, foreshadowing the show’s argument about myth-making.

Key Facts

• Artist: Original Broadway Cast of Evita
• Featured: Announcer voice credited on releases featuring Carlos Pasini Hansen
• Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Lyricist: Tim Rice
• Producers: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice
• Release Date: 1979
• Genre: Pop, Musicals
• Instruments: spoken voice with orchestral underscore leading into chorus
• Label: MCA Records
• Mood: solemn, ceremonial
• Length: 1:18
• Track #: 1
• Language: Spanish and English
• Album: Evita (Original Cast Recording)
• Music style: prologue scene with announcement-over-underscore that pivots into choral requiem

Questions and Answers

Who produced “A Cinema in Buenos Aires, 26 July 1952”?

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice produced the Broadway premiere album that includes this track.

When was this track released by the Original Broadway Cast?

1979, on the Evita premiere American recording.

Who wrote it?

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice.

Whose voice delivers the announcement?

Releases credit Carlos Pasini Hansen as the Spanish dialogue actor and announcer on these opening cues.

How long is the prologue?

Approximately 1 minute and 18 seconds before it hands off to “Requiem for Evita.”

Awards and Chart Positions

The 1979 Broadway production won the Tony Award for Best Musical, alongside wins for Best Original Score and Best Book. The premiere American recording later won the Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album in 1981. The 1996 film soundtrack also opens with this same bulletin, keeping the structure intact.

Additional Info

• The film adaptation begins in a cinema with the death announcement, mirroring the stage prologue to anchor the narrative in a documented moment.
• The exact time given in the announcement - 20:25 - matches historical reporting of Eva Perón’s passing in Buenos Aires.
• Multiple cast recordings in English and other languages retain the opening bulletin, reaffirming it as the show’s fixed doorway.