Siren Soprano

04/09/2001 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Bryan Reesman

Internationally acclaimed soprano Sarah Brightman has been hailed as a crossover success, with her last three albums topping the Billboard classical crossover charts and worldwide sales exceeding an impressive 8 million units. Her latest release, La Luna, hit number 17 on the Billboard charts upon its August 2000 release, and has already been certified gold. But the idea of her being a crossover artist seems a misnomer, since Brightman does not attempt to dive into other genres; rather, she draws them into her world and gives them her own inimitable interpretation.

The sublime La Luna, and its forthcoming home video and DVD companions, showcases her singing in five different languages as she covers songs by Ennio Morricone, Beethoven, Procol Harum, and many others. As the title suggests, the moon is the theme that links many of these seemingly disparate artists together. Appropriately, Brightman views making an album like painting a picture: Once she begins with a scene, the ideas come into play.

"I like albums that are rounded," she explains. "I don't like the idea of placing song-after-song-after-song for no reason. I like pieces that carry on from one to the next to the next. I like symphonies in classical music, and they normally have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there's a reason why they do what they do. So for me, the scene really helps me to then start to color and paint the picture. And that's, in a way, helped me to choose the kind of material that I was going to do. Obviously some of the pieces are about the moon or folklore tales about the moon, because when I think of any lunar-type ideas, it's about mixing ancient with modern things. Of course, there are lots of old pieces of music here sitting next to very contemporary pieces of music."

Like her past albums, La Luna features a diverse repertoire; this time it includes "Scarborough Fair," "Gloomy Sunday," "Figlio Perduto," "A Whiter Shade Of Pale," and "Hijo De La Luna." All of the tunes are given atmospheric orchestral twists that are signature Brightman. Her artistic breadth is natural, given that the classically trained soprano embraces a wide range of music herself, from the Cocteau Twins to Sergei Prokofiev.

Brightman began her career in her teens with the 1978 U.K. disco hit "I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper" (with the group Hot Gossip) before continuing onto Broadway with a role in Cats and leads in Nightingale and Phantom Of The Opera. Following her Broadway tenure in 1988, she steadily released many solo albums--The Trees They Grow So High, The Songs That Got Away, As I Come Of Age, Dive, Fly, The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, Time To Say Goodbye, and Eden--through which she has explored myriad facets of Broadway, pop and rock, folk, and classical music.

While today she is regularly billed as a "classical crossover" artist, she confesses that "I don't think the purists even think of me, because I don't work within a purist field, so my records aren't displayed in the classical section." But they seem to be displayed everywhere else. "I went to one CD store--I think it was in Boston--and I found myself in new age, rock and pop, easy listening. I didn't find it in the classical section. I think they put it everywhere, because they don't quite know where to put it. I have found Fly in goth sections."

That last admission is rather amusing, although given the fact that she sports a tight latex suit on the cover of Fly, it is somewhat understandable. Furthermore, Brightman is inspired by religious iconography for her album art. On the cover of La Luna, she stands in a Christ-like pose, costumed in a white dress and sporting a crown of rhinestones. "I do generally get my images from religious imaging, and always have," she admits. "I was quite...not religious as a child, but I wanted to go into the church. I wanted to be a nun twice in my life. I've been very affected by that whole thing."

Brightman says that while she is not really a religious person, she feels very spiritual. "Everything in my life is actually based on that. My singing is, to me, a very spiritual thing. And my imaging, everything. It's probably why I have come up with those kinds of things in my record covers." Some people might have a hard time envisioning her as a nun. "I don't think it was the idea of being dressed like that, it was the idea of committing to something, of being that spiritually driven. It's difficult to explain. People can't explain why they need to do this."

To many of her fans, the singer is truly an angel. They are enthralled by her luxurious singing and lavish concert presentations. Brightman is not daunted by the task of her large-scale performances thanks to her past experiences in musical theater.

"They're incredibly complicated," she says of her shows, "but I don't find them so complicated, because I spent so many years in theater. I learned so much, whereas a lot of artists who are in the pop charts and are able to do arena type shows haven't necessarily had that experience. For me, it's very natural. I know what works, what doesn't work, all the old tricks. My ideas are very immediate, and I know how to put them across. The team I work with is really amazing. They are some of the best people. To tell you the truth, I don't really use elaborate sets, I use a lot of very dramatic backdrops, and I use lighting to create all of my atmospheres--amazing lighting. It's truly beautiful."

Over the years, the star soprano has had the good fortune to work with the London Symphony Orchestra, Placido Domingo, Andrea Bocelli, Tom Jones, José Cura, and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and she has recorded songs by Puccini, Brian May, the Gipsy Kings, Carl Orff, Ennio Morricone, and Rachmaninov. The title track to Time To Say Goodbye, a duet with Bocelli, has sold 5 million singles worldwide. Given all of her successful collaborations, one has to wonder what the most profound experience of her career has been. "I don't think I've come to it yet," Brightman says.

Is she still looking for it? "I'm not looking, it will come," she surmises optimistically. "In the last part of my career, I would like to write symphonies; I think that will be my best experience. I want to do it, but you need so much experience, you need so much depth in your life to be able to do it, and to do it well. So I know that will be the last part of my career." Luckily for Brightman fans, it looks set to be a long and fruitful one.