Sunset Boulevard - Australia w/ Sarah Brightman 2024

It does look fabulous visually, as does Sarah. What a shame if her performance doesn’t hack it.

Although I am from Sydney, family on my mithers side all live in Melbourne.

I have messaged them with the recommendation to go and see it, as I will when it travels to Sydney.

Full performance of the title song from the press call:

This production looks stunning. Everything set and costume wise is so perfect. But have to admit in that short clip I'm not sold on Sarah's voice

I'm sure they could of waited two years on the license and gotten the Jamie Lloyd production. Shame Australians won't be getting it anytime soon. I'll still go and see this in Sydney though.

Jaw on the floor.  If that's right then any sympathy for her over the stinging reviews for her performance totally evaporates.

I don't know what people were expecting..?

She was genuinely awful at the curtain call for the Phantom Albert Hall concert. Pitch correction in the DVD for that does only so much, but when they start to mix in a multitrack from the ORIGINAL cast recording, you KNOW her voice is not in the greatest state.

I hope the rest of the run goes well at least...

This thread sent me looking on youtube for a fancam of her at the encore of 'Phantom' anniversary at the Albert Hall, so without any commercial release wizardry.  She sounds fine; due to applause it's Colm Wilkinson who comes in at the wrong place so sounds out of tune (but that's a timing not tuning issue). She doesn't sound great in the lower register, and has to take breaths too often and quite noisy gasps, and we all assume the cadenza is mimed, so not a lot of singing altogether. It was 13 years ago.

In the highly controlled situation of her own high tech gigs I'm sure all of those quirks/faults could be managed and muted live.  Literally someone on the 'gasp muting button'.  Her concert repertoire sound seems quite floating and ethereal, meaning that the songs are built for pauses and breaths, and of course talitored to hit all of the sweetest spots of her voice. That's before you get to some kind enhancement at the desk. All so different from taking a role in 'Sunset Boulevard' that has sung lines at the rhythms and intensity of ordinary speech.

When I heard on 'X' that this was bad at 'Sunset Boulevard' I did think it was a shame if inability there casts doubt on her concerts - and I really hope they've not used a lot of fakery; for the audience's sake.  If so, she'd have been caught in a kind of self-delusion about her current abilities, akin to Max writing Norma's fan mail. From the interviews it looks like she was aware of the challenge though, and must have asked someone she trusts 'can I really do this?'.  Failing that - trust noone, record your own voice and listen to it back!

Very good deep dive max

Funny you mention CW entering prematurely; seems like an issue he randomly has with this song in particular..!

If you listen to the original Sydmonton bootleg, he makes the exact same mistake in that as in this concert.

chernjam , the interview is strange. She says a lot of it was written on her voice, which a lot of the press picked up as a headline; rather fatally suggesting an 'I've come home at last' situation. But elsewhere in the interview she says a lot of the music was written for other pieces and then shifted into 'Sunset Boulevard'. So that would be the equivalent of 'Married Man' being written on her voice but then becoming 'Music Of The Night' - and I don't suppose the Phantom sings it in the same key that Sarah Brightman sang 'Married Man'. I've only seen her on a US TV show doing it, and boy the lyrics are clunky - fascinating how a song can transform.

She wasn't lying of course, but across the piece the truth hints at why she may have tricked herself into this. Yet, to get the best of her own depleting voice I think she sensibly knows everything about where to pitch songs in her concerts. Who would be so persuasive as to encourage her to overcome her own good sense? Who would forget the lesson of their own well-known but fascinating anecdote about Judy Garland's signature song turning on her that night at The Talk Of The Town in London?