‘I said that I wanted to work on things that really make me happy’

Sarah Brightman almost became an astronaut, but with those plans on hold she’s exploring a new front in music she tells Lucy Mapstone

Three years after pulling out of her planned trip to the International Space Station, Sarah Brightman still hopes to go into space one day.

The British soprano raised more than a few eyebrows in 2012 when she unveiled her plan to make the intergalactic excursion and she underwent extensive training at a top facility just outside Moscow.

She was due to blast off in a Russian Soyuz rocket on an orbital tourist flight in September 2015, and would perform a song chosen by ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber, but she stepped down from the mission several months beforehand for “personal family reasons”.

The experience had quite an impact on Brightman, whose new album was a reaction to everything she went through, and she’s not drawn a line under her childhood dream to – quite literally – get out of this world just yet.

“I didn’t have any choice but to pull out,” she says.

She confesses she still can’t really talk about why she had to stand down, but adds: “It was nothing to do with me.

“I talked with my family very deeply about it and my mother wasn’t very happy at all. So we just made the decision...” she trails off, before continuing: “It’s not that I won’t go later, but at the moment I’m just letting things go and I’m concentrating on my own things.

“But I never say never with these things. There was a reason why I was there and why I passed all the tests in Russia. It was very challenging for me, but it was an amazing experience.”

Out of everything that happened came Hymn, her first record in five years and a return to more classical, operatic stylings.

“I’d come off the space programme in Russia and I needed to ground myself,” Brightman says.

“Everything has been quite challenging – not that I failed in any way – and I needed to find somewhere I could just sing.”

0 Sarah Brightman has returned to a more operatic style

She recalls finding a beach and working with an old friend, an opera coach, “so I could get back to myself ”, before talking to long-time producer Frank Peterson, who encouraged her to work with choirs.

“He asked me what was on my mind at the moment, and I said that I just wanted to work on things that really make me happy, full of hope and light and that I want to work with lots of human voices,” she says.

“We started researching into choirs and we came across loads of things until we came up with Hymn. There are choirs from all corners of the world on there.”

Of the overall feel and theme of the album itself, Brightman refers to her younger days.

“I wanted something that reminded me of a peaceful childhood. Not that there are Christian songs on there, but pieces that highlight the feelings I felt when I was singing in church in a choir.”

The idea of sharing uplifting music is important to Brightman, 58, who cut her teeth in the industry in dance troupes Pan’s People and Hot Gossip in the 1970s.

Her career has taken an extraordinary number of turns, from an early disco singing stint with hits such as I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper, to making a name for herself as a stage star in the original London production of Cats and then later as Christine in the first production of The Phantom Of The Opera by her then-

husband Lloyd Webber.

Following her stage career, she scored success as a classical crossover artist, further propelling her into the international market with a number of albums, which have sold millions of copies, and hit songs, including Time To Say Goodbye with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Among her countless concerts across the world, one of her most memorable career moments happened in 2008 when she found herself at the biggest gig of her life performing at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to an estimated global audience of four billion people.

Brightman who is in the middle of a 125-date world tour, remains thankful to her audience.

“The amazing thing is that people bother to buy a ticket to come to your concert, make all that effort, and that in itself is a huge adrenaline-giver,” she admits.

“I feel very, very privileged that I am in this position, so I give it my everything, every time.”

Musing on a time when she might retire from performing, she hopes writing, composing or conducting would be options for her.

“There are lots of other things that are a connection with music.”

She adds: “I’m never really worried about getting older in that way.”

And hopefully, before then, Brightman will finally get to realise her childhood dream of launching into space to sing an aria or two in front of perhaps her biggest global audience ever.

“I’d come off the space programme in Russia and I needed to ground myself”

● Hymn is out now