Sarah Brightman

Brightman is the eldest of six children of businessman Geoffrey Brightman (1934 –1992) and Paula Brightman, née Hall.

She was brought up in Little Gaddesden near Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England.

At the age of three she began taking dance and piano classes.

She

then went on to perform in local festivals and competitions.

At age 11, she successfully auditioned for the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, a school specialising in performing arts.

She received her education at Elmhurst Ballet School, Camberley, the Arts Educational School in Chiswick, West London, and the Royal College of Music.

Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano singer, actress, and dancer.

Brightman began her career as a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip and released several disco singles as a solo performer.

In 1973, at the age of 13, Brightman made her theatrical debut in the musical I and Albert at the Piccadilly Theatre, London, playing one of Queen Victoria's daughters (Victoria).

In 1976 she was recruited into Arlene Phillips' troupe Hot Gossip in 1977.

She was also briefly with Pan's People after they parted with their host show Top of the Pops in 1976.

Brightman, now solo, released more disco singles under her own label, Whisper Records, such as "Not Having That!"

and a cover of the song "My Boyfriend's Back".

The group had a disco hit in 1978 with "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper", which sold half a million and reached number six on the UK charts.

In 1979, Brightman appeared on the soundtrack of the film The World Is Full of Married Men and sang the song "Madam Hyde".

In 1981, she made her West End musical theatre debut in Cats and met composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she later married.

She went on to star in several West End and Broadway musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera, where she originated the role of Christine Daaé.

In 1981, Brightman auditioned for the new musical Cats, by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, and was cast as Jemima.

After a year in Cats, Brightman took over from Bonnie Langford as Kate in The Pirates of Penzance at the Drury Lane Theatre, London, and appeared as Tara Treetops in Masquerade, a musical based on Kit Williams's book of the same title.

In that year she left to play the title role in Charles Strouse's children's opera, Nightingale.

Enticed by a rave review, Lloyd Webber went to watch her in the show one evening and was greatly impressed by her performance.

Though she had appeared in his musical Cats, Lloyd Webber had not previously singled Brightman out as a great talent.

The two married in 1984, and Brightman appeared in Lloyd Webber's subsequent musicals including The Phantom of the Opera and Song and Dance, as well as the mass Requiem, which was written and composed for Lloyd Webber's father.

In 1985, Brightman's recording of "Pie Jesu" was a strong commercial success, selling 25,000 copies on the first day of release and peaking at number 3, despite the lyrics being in Latin.

With classical music permeating the Lloyd Webber household (Brightman was in heavy operatic training at the time), Lloyd Webber was moved to write the Requiem Mass as a tribute to his father.

Its Manhattan premiere, starring Plácido Domingo and Brightman, was filmed by the BBC and PBS for later broadcast.

The LP eventually became UK's top selling classical album of the year and earned Brightman a Grammy nomination as Best New Classical Artist.

Brightman starred as Christine Daaé in Lloyd Webber's adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera.

The role of Christine was written specifically for her.

Her original London cast album of Phantom was released in CD format in 1987 and sold 40 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling cast album ever.

After retiring from stage acting and divorcing Lloyd Webber, Brightman resumed her music career with former Enigma producer Frank Peterson, this time as a classical crossover artist.

She has been credited as the creator and remains among the most prominent performers of this genre, with worldwide sales of more than 25 million albums and two million DVDs, establishing herself as the world's best-selling soprano.

Brightman is the first artist to have been invited twice to perform the theme song at the Olympic Games, first at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games where she sang "Amigos Para Siempre" with the Spanish tenor José Carreras with an estimated global audience of a billion people, and 16 years later in 2008 in Beijing, this time with Chinese singer Liu Huan, performing the song "You and Me" to an estimated four billion people worldwide.

Brightman's 1996 duet with the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, "Time to Say Goodbye", topped the charts all over Europe and became the highest and fastest-selling single of all time in Germany, where it stayed at the top of the charts for 14 consecutive weeks and sold over three million copies.

It subsequently became an international success, selling 12 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all-time.

She has collected over 200 gold and platinum record awards in 38 countries.

In 2010, she was named by Billboard the fifth most influential and best-selling classical artist of the 2000s decade in the US and according to Nielsen SoundScan, she has sold 6.5 million albums in the country.

Since 2010, Brightman has been Panasonic's global brand ambassador.

In 2012, Brightman was appointed as the UNESCO Artist for Peace for the period 2012–2014, for her "commitment to humanitarian and charitable causes, her contribution, throughout her artistic career, to the promotion of cultural dialogue and the exchanges among cultures, and her dedication to the ideals and aims of the Organization".