‘I felt I could understand this role’: Sarah Brightman on playing Norma Desmond

Sarah Brightman, one of the world’s most successful sopranos, is worried about the Australian wildlife. “I love being here,” she says. “I love Melbourne. But I am terrified of the huntsman. It’s in my DNA or it’s primeval, but they are so scary.”

Brightman, who has sold 30 million records, topped more than 1 billion streams of her music, and recently toured the world performing arena concerts, is in Australia for a new production of her former husband Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard for Opera Australia.

Perhaps best known for originating and inspiring the lead role of Christine Daaé in the hit musical The Phantom of the Opera, written by Lloyd Webber, and for her 1996 duet Time To Say Goodbye with Andrea Bocelli, Brightman has spent 34 years away from musical theatre.

Brightman as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.Credit: Ben King

She has returned to play Norma Desmond, the forgotten star of the silent film era, who, as the talkies evolve and the years pass, creates a world in which she ignores the fact that she is fading into obscurity. Immortalised by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 Billy Wilder film on which the musical is based, the role of Norma attracted Brightman for its complexity and its resonance with modern times.

“I’ve had my own career going. I’ve done many recordings, all these wonderful concerts all over the world. It’s been an interesting, creative time to run my own career,” she says. “But this role, it feels, first of all, age-appropriate, which is important for me. Also, the role is about an international star, she was a movie star of the time, and I have sort of had an international stardom.”

She says she understands the “trials and tribulations” of a woman having to navigate that area. “The power it takes to get up and do things, the courage required, the falls and the highs. I felt I could understand a role like this because I’ve lived through some of it.”

When Brightman spoke to Lloyd Webber about doing Sunset Boulevard, he told her a lot of the music was written for her voice. “When we were together as a couple, he was continually writing at that time, and probably a lot of those pieces. He was writing Phantom … probably there were various pieces that he had in mind with my voice in it.”

Of Sunset Boulevard, she says, “it’s an amazing role”.

“Norma was living through a time of change in her world where technology was moving on, and, unfortunately, it moved on without her,” Brightman says. “That is very true of many music artists of this day and age after downloading happened and other aspects of music production.

Brightman with her former husband Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1983.Credit: Daily Mirror

“There’s an exoticness to the crumbling world Norma is trying to maintain, but it’s a bygone era. It’s an incredibly sad story. And she’s very human and I think that a lot of people could kind of really relate to her.”

After three decades away from musical theatre, Brightman relishes the challenge of the role and treading the boards each week.

“Something is always learned by being challenged, especially as an artist,” she says. “Otherwise your life as an artist, it can become too easy and you start repeating and then sort of the joy goes out of it.”

Few artists, however, have challenged themselves to train for life in outer space. In 2015, Brightman was scheduled to depart on the three-person Russian Soyuz spacecraft for a self-funded 10-day space tourism mission to the International Space Station.

She spent months, and an estimated $US52 million, training to be a cosmonaut, immersed in physics, robotics, microgravity, psychological testing and intense survival skills.

Set to be the second British woman in space, and planning to sing onboard the ISS, she also endured extreme G-forces in a rapidly rotating centrifuge, and spent 72 hours in a below-zero Russian forest with prune rations on a quest to build a shelter from a parachute and branches.

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO SARAH BRIGHTMAN

1. Worst habit? I don’t really have any worst habits. I was asking my brother about this and he said, “You’re a bit of a workaholic, but that’s not really a worst thing”. I see things fairly positively.
2. Greatest fear? Spiders.
3. The line that stayed with you? I can’t think of just one. There are absolutely plenty.
4. Biggest regret? I really feel we do everything for a reason at that particular time and moment. We may look back and go “Oh God, what was I doing?” But there is a real reason why.
5. Favourite room? All of my bedrooms. I always make sure they’re perfect for me. The rest of the house, or apartment or wherever I am, could be a real mess. But the bedroom has to be a really safe space you feel happy.
6. The artwork/song you wish was yours? Killing Me Softly by Roberta Flack. It was an American folk-rock song originally. It evokes something lovely in me. I have a good, wonderful feeling when I listen to it.
7. If I could solve one thing… I wish everybody in the world owned a roof over their head, had access to medical care and all animals and creatures were really respected. I know that’s three things but that’s what I would want to solve.

But three months before the launch, she announced she would no longer be flying due to “personal family reasons”.

Space, she says, has intrigued her since she was a child, particularly when Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969.

“I’d always been fascinated by light, by skies, by the sun, moon, all the folklore you’re read to as a child,” she says. “But when the first man went on the moon, seeing that happen on a black-and-white TV screen when I was eight, it did actually change things for me. When I saw that, my understanding as a child was, ‘Gosh, everything is possible here’.”

Nearly 50 years later – decades after her chart-topping, award-winning soprano career was jumpstarted when she joinedArlene Phillips’ dance group Hot Gossip at the age of 16, singing I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper in a sparkling leotard – the same philosophy compelled her to become a cosmonaut.

Brightman in her Hot Gossip Dancers days, in 1986.Credit: Express Newspapers

“I left school, and I left maths, at age 14,” she says. “And I suddenly realised I could do all of these things. First of all, you can’t get your head around it, then suddenly you’re using parts of your brain we don’t normally need on Earth. A whole part of your brain that’s open suddenly goes into gear.

“I’ve never, ever been as challenged as that, and I started to understand how strong I was. It was an amazing thing to have done, a magical thing, and I feel very lucky.”

Brightman’s last musical theatre season was Aspects of Love, which she performed in seasons in London and New York in 1990. After decades of global touring, album releases and film work (including the romcom First Night with Richard E. Grant), and performances at the 1992 and 2008 Olympics, appearing in a musical has stirred memories and creativity.

Brightman on the set of Sunset Boulevard with co-star Tim Draxl.Credit: Justin McManus

“I knew it would be challenging to come back into it,” she says. “But it’s something that I know and I do understand. It’s really just with the muscle memory of an older person coming back into it. You just have to navigate your way around this … it’s been quite interesting in rehearsals.”

The beauty of it being in Australia, she says, is that everybody is “really, really friendly”.

“There’s a lovely theatre scene here, everyone’s really well-trained, and they do everything beautifully. And it’s just a lovely country to be in,” she says. “There’s a lot of tension, obviously, with these things, because you have to be on top of everything with lines and singing all the time. But if your environment is good, which it is here, it’s a pleasure to be in it.”

After Sunset Boulevard, Brightman is unsure she will do another musical, but she sees the poetry of crowning her musical theatre career with a work by Lloyd Webber.

“It’s a personal journey for me in a way,” she says. “Having worked with Andrew on Cats, with Phantom of the Opera, Song and Dance, Requiem, all those things, I felt it completed the circle.”

Now, as she personifies Norma Desmond each night on stage, her only obstacle remains hairy long-legged arachnids. “I want to learn all about them,” she says. “But we do have all our windows closed.”

Sunset Boulevard, now playing at The Princess Theatre; Sydney Opera House from August 28. sunsetmusical.com.au