Sarah Brightman to star in Sunset Boulevard in Melbourne and Sydney
More than 30 years since her last stage role, Sarah Brightman is ready for her close-up as faded movie star Norma Desmond.
Sarah Brightman, the original co-star of The Phantom of the Opera, is to take on her first major theatre role in more than 30 years and has chosen Melbourne and Sydney for her debut in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard.
Brightman will take the stage as Norma Desmond in a new production of the musical, saying she has reached the stage of her career where she could convincingly play a fading Hollywood star from the silent era.
“I am now what one would call, I suppose, a mature artist,” Brightman said. “I can really imagine, when you have had such an amazing career, for that to be ripped away from you, and how you deal with that … I can go there. That’s why I took it on.”
Sunset Boulevard is based on the 1950 movie directed by Billy Wilder and starring Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond.
In the musical, Norma was portrayed by Glenn Close on Broadway and in Australia by Debra Byrne, opposite Hugh Jackman.
Brightman last appeared on the Broadway stage in Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love in 1991, and since then has been a popular recording and concert artist.
She said she had been offered other stage roles over the years, and was surprised at the invitation to play Norma Desmond.
“I have been offered many roles since I’ve had this other wonderful career and I haven’t taken them on – they obviously weren’t fitting with how I was feeling as an artist at that time,” she said. “If you feel that there’s something within the role that you can really identify with, that’s when you should take it on.”
Brightman was performing in Cats in the early 1980s when she met and then married Lloyd Webber. She became his “muse” for the role of Christine Daae in Phantom of the Opera in 1986 but the couple separated in 1990.
Sunset Boulevard will open at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in May and at the Sydney Opera House from August, in a “newly imagined revival” presented by GWB Entertainment and Opera Australia.
Brightman said she especially liked Lloyd Webber’s music for the show, which evoked the golden era of Hollywood film scores.
“Andrew is a great composer … he was really able to take that on, and understood it,” she said.
Brightman toured Australia in concert with Anthony Warlow in 1996, and last performed here with her Harem show in 2004.