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Sarah
Brightman - Bio
14 August 1961, England. An actress and singer
who first came to notice in 1978 when, with the dance
group Hot Gossip, she made the UK Top 10 with the
disco-pop single 'I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper'.
It was all a far cry from her childhood ambition to
become a ballet dancer. Three years after her chart
success, she won a part in Andrew Lloyd Webber 's
musical Cats, and was noticed again - this time by
the composer himself - and they were married in 1984. The
marriage lasted for six years, and, during that time,
Brightman became established as one of the premier
leading ladies of the musical theatre. After Cats,
she appeared for a season at the Old Vic in Frank
Dunlop's 1982 adaptation of Masquerade, and later
in the year she was in Charles Strouse 's
short-lived musical Nightingale. All this time she
was taking singing lessons, training her superb soprano
voice so that she could undertake more demanding roles
than those in conventional musical comedy. In 1984 she
appeared in the television version of Lloyd Webber's Song
And Dance, and also sang on the Top 30 album. A year
later, she made her operatic debut in the role of
Valencienne in The Merry Widow at Sadlers Wells,
and gave several concerts of Lloyd Webber's Requiem
in England and America, which resulted in another
bestselling album. It also produced a Top 5 single, 'Pie
Jesu', on which Brightman duetted with the 12-year-old
Paul Miles-Kingston. In 1986 she enjoyed a great personal
triumph when she co-starred with Michael Crawford
in The Phantom Of The Opera, and recreated her
role two years later on Broadway. She had UK Top 10 hits
with three songs from the show, 'The Phantom Of The
Opera' (with Steve Harley ), 'All I Ask Of You'
(with Cliff Richard ) and 'Wishing You Were
Somehow Here Again'. In the late 80s and early 90s, she
toured many parts of the world, including Japan and the
UK, in a concert production of The Music Of Andrew
Lloyd Webber. In December 1991, at the end of the
American leg of the tour, she took over the leading role
of Rose in Aspects Of Love for the last few weeks
of the Broadway run. She also joined the West End
production for a time, but, while her presence was
welcomed and her performance critically acclaimed, she
was unable to prevent its closure in June 1992. In the
same year Brightman was high in the UK chart again, this
time duetting with opera singer José Carreras on the
Olympic Anthem, 'Amigos Para Siempre (Friends For Life)',
which was written, inevitably, by Andrew Lloyd Webber,
with lyric by Don Black. In 1993 she made her
debut in the straight theatre with appearances in Trelawny
Of The Wells and Relative Values. For some
years it had been forecast that Lloyd Webber would write
a stage musical or film for her based on the life of Jessie
Matthews, the graceful star of many 20s and 30s
musicals, and to whom she bears an uncanny facial
resemblance. However, in 1994 the composer dropped his
option on Michael Thornton's biography of Matthews, and
announced that there 'no further plans to develop the
project'. Based mostly in Germany in the 90s, Brightman
continued to perform in Australia, Canada, America and
elsewhere. In 1997 her duet with the blind Tuscan tenor
Andrea Bocelli, 'Time To Say Goodbye', topped the charts
throughout Europe, and is reported to have 'gone platinum
five times'. In the same year, her tour of the UK, in
company with the English National Orchestra, included a
concert at London's Royal Albert Hall. She had another
surprise UK hit single in 1997 when 'Timeless' went near
the top of the charts. |
