Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano, actress, songwriter and dancer. She began her career as a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip and released several disco singles as a solo performer. In 1981, she made her musical theatre debut in Cats and met composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom she married. She went on to star in several Broadway musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera, where she originated the role of Christine Daaé. The Original London Cast Album of the musical was released in CD format in 1987 and sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling cast album of all time. After retiring from the stage and divorcing Lloyd Webber, Brightman resumed her music career with former Enigma producer Frank Peterson, this time as a classical crossover artist. She is among the most prominent performers in the genre, with worldwide sales of more than 30 million records and 2 million DVDs. Her duet with the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, "Time To Say Goodbye", topped charts all over Europe and became the highest and fastest selling single of all times in Germany, where it stayed at the top of the charts for fourteen consecutive weeks breaking the all-time sales record, with over 3 million copies sold in the country and subsequently became an international success with 12 million copies worldwide. She has now collected over 180 gold and platinum sales awards in 38 different countries. Brightman is the only artist to have been invited twice to perform at the Olympic Games, first at the 1992' Barcelona Olympic Games where she sang "Amigos Para Siempre" with the Spanish tenor Jose Carreras with an estimated global audience of a billion people, and sixteen years later in Beijing, this time with Chinese singer Liu Huan and performing the song "You and Me" to an estimated 4 billion people worldwide.
