The tragic accident that catapulted Sarah Brightman onto the world stage

Sarah Brightman was not the first choice to sing the iconic song Friends Forever for the 1992 Olympic Games in Madrid with José Carreras.

It is still considered one of the greatest Olympic songs of all time and its message of unity, friendship and love is the perfect celebration of the Games.

Brightman, 64, spoke to 9honey ahead of her starring role as Norma Desmond in Boulevard of Twilight which, after a successful performance in Melbourne, will be shown in Sydney from August 28 to November 1.

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She reflected on the success of the Olympic song.

“I think it's just a really good piece, just a good song,” she tells 9honey. “It's something that everyone can sing along to.”

Brightman says she “wasn’t originally meant to do this,” but a tragic accident turned out to be a happy coincidence for the experienced opera singer.

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“Gloria Estefan was offered the spot because she is Spanish and speaks Spanish. They wanted people of her race for the Olympics,” Brightman explains.

“But Gloria had a bad accident.”

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Estefan, 66, was involved in a serious bus accident in 1990, when she was at the peak of her career, which left her with a broken back from which she would spend years recovering.

“Because the composer knew how my voice sounded, he knew I could jump in and do it right away,” she recalls.

“That’s why I ended up in Barcelona.”

Brightman was asked to perform a second time at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a song called You and me with the Chinese artist Liu Huan. This time she was the first to be asked.

“I'm a very big Western star in China,” says Brightman. “I never tried to be. It just happened because they liked my music and loved it.”

She is also a big star in Japan and served as a judge on the Japanese talent show Project X in 2022.

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Brightman says it was easy to see which candidates had the potential to become stars.

“You can tell immediately which song really stands out, and in that respect it's actually not that difficult because you're not necessarily thinking about whether the song is a hit or not, or whether the dance is a hit,” she explains.

“You look at the person. Because at the end of the day, what makes people stars and what makes them more successful than other people is that they have that little something extra that makes them shine and that you can't explain.”

Brightman also has star qualities and has had them since early childhood. Her first appearance on stage was at the age of 11 in a show called I am Albert in her home country of England, in London.

“I was a competitive child. That is, from the age of three I took part in competitions in my own country and in festivals there. It involved singing, dancing, acting and all these things,” she recalls.

“I always had a voice,” she says.

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She only began her actual training as an opera singer at the age of 17. She was also successful as a pop singer, in addition to theater appearances, starting with a role in Cats Then The Pirates of Penzance, Masquerade And Nightingale.

Her work caught the attention of her former husband, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who played the role of Christine Daaé in Phantom of the Opera on her, his muse.

Her latest role as Norma Desmond in Boulevard of Twilight is perfectly coordinated.

“The role requires a more mature artist because Norma Desmond's character has a lot of experience and has been through everything. She had a great career, then went downhill and it was all over,” she says.

Boulevard of Twilight follows Norma Desmond and her struggle with the end of the silent film era in which she was a major star.

Brightman has also witnessed the rapid changes that have transformed her profession, particularly as a musician who first released vinyl records, then cassettes, CDs and now song downloads, not to mention the crucial role social media plays in promoting her work.

“It allowed me to draw on what I had just seen in our time,” says Brightman. “In some ways, it's actually a pretty modern piece.”

Book your tickets to see Sunset Boulevard from August 28 to November 1 at the Sydney Opera House Here.

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