Sarah Brightman’s first musical theatre performance in three decades will feature in a new Opera Australia season set to double the representation of female creatives compared with previous years.

In a coup for Australia’s largest performing arts company, Brightman – whose inspired and originated the character of Christine in former husband Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, which propelled her to superstardom in the 1980s – will star in the world premiere of a new production of Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre next May, followed by the Sydney Opera House in August.