Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot is to play Juan Perón in the musical Evita, it was announced today by producers Opera Australia Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini, John Frost and David Ian. Szot will star opposite Tina Arena as Eva Perón, whose casting was announced in August last year.

Born in São Paulo, Szot has been to Australia once before when he played the title role in Eugene Onegin for Opera Australia in Melbourne in 2014. After making his professional opera debut in 1997 in his native city, singing Figaro in The Barber of Seville, he made his US debut at the New York City Opera as Escamillo in Carmen in 2003 and his European debut the following year at Marseille Opera as Eugene Onegin. At the Metropolitan Opera he has played Kovalyov in Shostakovich’s The Nose, Escamillo, and the Captain in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer. He has performed at many other opera houses around the US and Europe including La Scala and the Glyndebourne Festival.

Paulo Szot. Photograph supplied

In 2008, Szot made his Broadway debut as Emile de Becque in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, directed by Bartlett Sher for which he...