Sarah Brightman
Seven years ago, Sarah Brightman – the world’s biggest-selling soprano – announced that she was going on tour. Into space.
Despite being more used to cavernous concert halls than cramped cockpits, the former Mrs Andrew Lloyd Webber threw herself into cosmonaut training in Russia, preparing for 10 days on the International Space Station where she’d sing a piece especially composed by her ex-husband.
‘I’ve always been interested in space, so when I had the opportunity to do this I grasped it with two hands,’ says Brightman. ‘Everybody said “Oh this isn’t going to happen, you’re not even going to pass the tests”, and I passed everything.’
Yet shortly before the 2015 launch, Brightman pulled out, citing family reasons that she won’t divulge (‘I could write a book about it, but I’m not allowed to say’).
All went quiet, but now the apple-cheeked singer is back with her first album in five years. It’s called Hymn, but don’t expect the likes of Abide With Me: this is Brightman at her genre-busting best, mixing grandiose opera with chill-out pop.
‘There’s always a story behind these albums,’ says the 58-year-old. ‘When I came out of the space programme I really needed to ground myself, because I was a little bit distressed, so I found myself a beach and asked an opera coach to work with me every day.
‘I do feel that the world is a bit dystopian at the moment, and we don’t quite know how things are going to be in the future, so I wanted to do an album full of hope, that made me feel… happy.’
It’s been a lifetime of ups and downs for Brightman, the eldest of six children growing up in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Her mother, a former dancer, enrolled her in ballet classes aged three, ‘but I wasn’t a show-off, I was incredibly shy; I still suffer from shyness – I’m not good at parties,’ she admits. ‘But I was naturally incredibly gifted. I could play the piano, I had a voice, I knew how to move. I had all the right things, so there was no question, really, about what I was going to do.’
By 12 she’d made her West End debut, playing Queen Victoria’s daughter in the musical I and Albert; by 16 she’d left school, and at 17 Brightman joined the Kenny Everett Show’s resident dance troupe, Hot Gossip – infamous for their racy costumes and risqué routines. Wasn’t it all a bit raunchy for someone so young?
‘We didn’t really think about the raunchiness, it actually was about how good a dancer you were,’ says Brightman. ‘I had a different look, and that’s what I was brought in for,’ she adds, referring to her huge saucer-eyes and mane of ringlets, ‘so actually I was always playing the virgin dressed in white, covered up to my neck! It was an interesting time, a very fabulous time.’
Brightman was 18 when, clad in a glittery catsuit and backed by Hot Gossip, she sashayed into the charts with her disco hit I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper. It rocketed to number six, but her next singles flopped, ‘and it was a major blow to me because I was really young. I ran out of money, and so I had to work out what I could do.’
The answer was a return to the stage. After an open audition for a new musical, Cats, Brightman was invited to sing for its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber – but insists that sparks didn’t fly. ‘This very sensitive, unusual man greeted me in a flowery shirt, and was very sweet and made me feel very relaxed, and I sang for him and I left. There was nothing extraordinary about the meeting.’
She spent 18 months in Cats before moving on to other musicals. One night, Lloyd Webber saw her playing the lead in The Nightingale, and took her out to dinner afterwards. The rest is history. He left his wife, they married in 1984, and she became his muse.
‘The time we were together was amazing, creatively, for both people,’ says Brightman. ‘I obviously inspired him to work with a voice he hadn’t worked with before, which gave him the idea to do Phantom, and for me, I had the opportunity to use my operatic training.’
Phantom of the Opera, the story of a disfigured musical genius who mentors an ambitious chorus girl, was a triumph. Brightman played Christine in London and New York, where it became Broadway’s longest-running show; 33 years later it’s still on in the West End. ‘It just was a perfect piece,’ she says. ‘Sometimes all sorts of things come together and make something perfect.’
But her marriage turned out to be less than perfect. ‘It was a tense time,’ she admits. ‘Being a Berkhamsted girl with a nice middle class life, suddenly I was thrown into this whole theatrical world, and it was quite hard to juggle being a wife of that type of man and also do what I should be doing with my career.’ They split after six years, ‘but we’ve stayed friends, and there are no regrets either side because wonderful things came out of it.’
Stepping away from musical theatre, Brightman moved first to Germany then the States, and began recording solo albums with sensational success. Today she has global sales of 30 million, although it’s fair to say she’s more popular overseas than in the UK.
In fact when Brightman plays the Royal Albert Hall in November – she’s currently on her Hymn tour, gracing stages from Las Vegas to Latvia in her unfeasibly spangly dresses – it will be her first London gig for 15 years.
‘It’s been a long time, and I’m so excited to bring this beautiful show back home,’ she says. But is the UK still home?
‘I don’t know where home is!’ replies Brightman, and laughs. ‘My boyfriend is American, I’ve got a nice apartment in New York, I’ve got a lovely family that live in England so I go there, and my work takes me all over the world.
‘I think my home is an aeroplane, actually. But it’s fine. I like it, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.’
:: Hymn: Sarah Brightman in Concert, Royal Albert Hall, November 11.
At 18, Brightman was briefly married to Andrew Graham-Stewart, manager of German electro band Tangerine Dream. After her divorce from Lloyd Webber she had a 10-year relationship with her record producer, Frank Peterson, and underwent IVF, but doesn’t have children.
Time To Say Goodbye, her duet with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, topped the charts around Europe in 1997, and remains Germany’s all-time bestselling single.
When her property developer father died by suicide in 1992, Brightman was criticised by the press for going on stage the same night; she said that performing was all she had to cling on to.
Famed for her crossover style, Brightman is the only performer who’s topped the Billboard classical and dance charts simultaneously. ‘I don’t think in terms of genres,’ she says. ‘I just love music.’
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend on February 7th 2019. (c) Waitrose