When Sarah Brightman arrives at The Venetian for her A Starlight Symphony … An Evening with Sarah Brightman engagement, she’ll be fresh from attending a ceremony honoring her with the 2,736th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The exhilaration generated from the event will likely carry over into the Starlight Symphony shows, her only live U.S. appearances of the year for which fans from around the world are attending.
The voice that originated the role of Christine Daaé on Broadway will now fill the hall where the Vegas version of Phantom of the Opera was performed for five years, bringing Brightman’s career full circle in more ways than one. She’s experienced a serendipitous, celestial journey from her ’70s disco hit “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper” to Starlight Symphony, with her recording catalog recently reaching more than 100 million plays on Apple Music.
The path that she followed was more organic than calculated, though. “If ever I have felt in the past that I should try to do something that I should be doing, it never really works,” says Brightman in a recent trans-Atlantic phone interview. “I have to really follow passion, if you like, about something even though everyone would say, ‘That’s not going to work,’ or ‘What are you doing?’ I just followed it because that felt right for me. I think that’s the secret for some creative artists’ success.”
Music, dance and acting was all Brightman knew by the time she had a dance music single on the charts at age 18. She made the transition from disco to musical theater in 1981 when she was cast in Cats, marrying the musical’s composer Andrew Lloyd Webber three years later. Her singing on Lloyd Webber’s 1985 album Requiem and creation of Christine for the 1986 debut of Phantom positioned her for the series of successes to come.
Her latest album, 2018’s Hymn, is cerebral and spiritual. It featured Brightman’s latest work with producer and Gregorian chant revivalist Frank Peterson, as well as a collaboration with Japanese musician Yoshiki, who will be at Starlight Symphony to perform “Miracle” with her.
Brightman toured extensively in support of Hymn, including a stop at Las Vegas’ The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, but three October 2020 dates at The Venetian had to be canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions. The rescheduled dates gave her the opportunity to “do something that was a little more retrospective.”
“I started going through all the lyrics in all of my pieces and linked a lot of the songs together, taking into account the time of year, like it’s Halloween,” says Brightman. “I wanted something uplifting but quite mysterious as well. I wanted a very symphonic sound, so I’ve got a wonderful orchestra onstage. I’ve got wonderful mysterious lighting. … I want to take the audience on a journey from the past up until now. And I wanted to talk a lot within the concert, which I don’t normally do, but I feel I’ve got to that point where I might have some funny things to say to the audience about how things came about.”
The Venetian, 8 p.m. Oct. 12, 14-15, starting at $59.95 plus tax and fee. ticketmaster.com
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