This pre-holiday week is marked by two happy occasions: live concerts. I always think a true test of artistic mettle is how someone hold up live, where the creative energy is palpable and there is no place to hide performance weaknesses. Last night I took mom to see Sarah Brightman at the Shark Tank, where memories of half marathon pervade. For those who may not be familiar with her, the part of Christine in Phantom of the Opera was written for her by ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Weber, and she sang at the Beijing Olympics (although that huge setting did not do her voice justice, and her Chinese counterpart was dressed like a slob.)
This weekend, I’ll be at the Metallica show in Oakland (Oracle arena) - talk about spanning the genres!
Sarah was a bit spur of the moment, I didn’t even know she was coming to town, until I saw a sign at Westfield mall. Armed with Nordstrom fair trade coffee, I caught the airbrushed, blondified, hair-straightened Sarah poster. Hmmm. How much I like her seems to decrease with the blonde levels. “Free concert tickets with the purchase of $350 at Westfield”. Wow. Mom loves Sarah Brightman, and once made the effort to get a ticket, drive solo to SF (probably her least favorite place to drive) to see Sarah’s concert when promoting the Eden album. An ex of mine played Time to Say Goodbye for me once, and I was hooked. That voice! I passed the CD onto mom and now she owns all of them (well, not the early Sarah weird pop). OKey dokey, I probably spend at least 400 bucks a year on random things at Westfield…particularly things I ingest. So within minutes I had tickets in hand and a call to mom made.
Thankfully, Sarah was again her lovely richly brown-haired self again. I’d only seen her before on rather staid PBS type specials, theatre type settings. My expectation was for a classical experience. I had no idea what I was in for! Looking over the stage, mom said “I wonder if she’ll fly!” I thought that was ridiculous. “But she did fly and had acrobats at Luna,” mom said.
Really?
Sarah Brightman is 48 years old but looks like…a doll. The same small pout, huge round eyes, wavy hair and smooth complexion of a doll. Her speaking voice is actually like a doll-like as well, albeit an English one, high, lilting, abnormally cute and charming. She thanked everyone for her 30 year career and then launched into a spectacle of the dramatic. I won’t give a play-by-play, but by the end of the evening, we had seen a 20 foot train on her dress, Sarah elevated on a huge trapeze thing dangerously high, dancers wielding canes, Japanese parasols, huge red balloons, and red ribbons, visually stunning “underwater scenes” done with reflective trickery and computer images, falling rose petals, glitter, and snow, an electric guitar solo, a giant bed, freaky Alice in Wonderland scenes, and a previously unknown creepy gothic Sarah in a red cape on a bicycle with ghouls around her in a short bit that left the audience agape-she could have been Evanescence. There were white short dresses, a can-can multi-hued one, butterfly, red, flowy, iridescent,corseted, green, black ones. Capes of all kinds, enchanted forests, butterflies, rain. And not least of all, duets with 2 astonishing men: Fernando Limas (Sarah of the soaring voice referred to him as ‘the voice of an angel’) and Mario Frangoulis.
As the drama levels rose I could hear the audience around me exclaim, “This is insane!” Followed shortly by “So AWESOME!” It was dazzling enough to border on cheesy at times, but hey, if a holiday time spectacle of a show is what we came for for, this was more than we bargained for.
I’ve heard she is the top selling soprano of all time. Perhaps so, if the audience last night was any representation of her fans. All ages, all races, all states of dress…just spellbound by that voice. Sometimes people screamed “I love you!” and “Bravo!” wildly, other times the entire shark tank was holding its breath as that siren’s call silenced all thought. “A gift from God” is how mom put it. Wikipedia states that her voice spans a three octave range, and in the bit from Phantom of The Opera last night, she hit, held, and continously elevated notes that were practically inhuman. In moments like that, she was truly, completely stunning.
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qGW9tn Thanks for good post
johnny 12.30.08 @ 11:37 amNice review! I enjoyed reading it.
LaLunaLady 01.12.09 @ 6:49 am