Sunset Boulevard - Australia w/ Sarah Brightman 2024

I shall now forever refer to Brightman as “The Soprano Mermaid”.

I'm also a big fan of Sarah's (majorly her early stuff 's till Symphony in 2008) and have always been fascinated about her live performances. I've seen a few, and others I have poured over videos online for years to try to work out how she does it and if she is actually singing live or not, because, as you said, she always sounds perfect! 
The conclusion I've come to is that there are a few songs that she always uses playback for and thus always sound pristine (POTO as you mentioned above, Nessun Dorma), some songs from a high note here or there are lip synched (eg: Running, Question of Honour, etc), and the others sung live. She has been singing most of these for the last 20 years, so as max said, is very aware of what and how to make them sound beautiful. Technical wizardry is also probably used to amplify her voice and reduce the deep breaths (which is becoming more noticeable in recent videos when compared with the same songs ten years ago). Her voice is not what it was all those years ago, and when she sings something live, it clearly shows some deficiencies, as opposed to something like POTO which when it sounds as perfect as it does,  is at odds with some of the other performances. 
I remember reading on Facebook that someone who had either been in the choir or orchestra during one of her tours in the last ten years had said that she actually does sing live and does a lot of meticulous sound checks and rehearsals. 

Her last Christmas tour in December 2023 (a few months before Sunset you could say) was very interesting. She had made new arrangements to some of her old songs, performed a couple of new songs (which is very rare as she sticks to the same thing over and over), and to me sounded very live (bar POTO etc which actually felt out of place). 
The security was also very strict about recordings, and there are no videos to be found at all from this tour despite there usually being a lot  in other years. I remember seeing some on a two different dubious Asian video sites after searching for months, but that was it. Two posted on YT were removed. 
I remember thinking at the time that she was probably using the opportunity change things up and prepare for Sunset. It'll be interesting to see how her concert is this year after almost six months of singing completely live on Sunset Boulevard. I hope she will at least do As If We Never Said Goodbye. 

My gut feeling (and hope), is that she will continue to get better as she settles into the show. For someone who has been doing concerts for the last 30 years, doing all of singing, acting, dancing, American accent, costume changes, working with an ensemble must take some time  to get back into the swing of. 

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From what I’ve heard no, it’s not better sadly. I had the chance to go back and she her for a second time and couldn’t bring myself to sit through it again. I will go and see Silvie if I get the chance.

Don't forget this is Joe's story, not Norma's!

Hi blamerobots - I hope you don' t mind that I've copied the latter section of your post here to continue your deep dive over in the 'Performers and Creatives' section on 'Andrew Lloyd Webber'.  You got me thinking, but I think I'd have taken this thread too far off track.

I'd be interested in your thoughts, and those from other "rabids" (chernjam BVM magnificentdonkey ) and All.

Absolute flop here in Melbourne , last week of the season removed from sale. Certain performances cancelled. If this was anywhere else London New York a closing notice would have gone up. They can’t give tickets away, Opera Australia subscribers returning tickets in record number.

So sad - I feel bad for all those involved. And an interesting contrast with the Jamie Lloyd production. I wonder if it tells us something about how audiences relate to the musicals of the eighties and nineties now - that, whilst they can still find an audience, they need a fresh approach to not feel dated?

They don't feel dated to me, but it's like shows from the fifties being staged in their original form in the nineties, which probably would have felt dated to me, no matter how good I felt the script/score was.

Found an article that confirms what rosscoe said.

www.theage.com.au/culture/theatre/lavish-opera-australia-production-of-sunset-boulevard-cuts-back-shows-20240612-p5jl4k.html

Was able to copy the text before the pay-wall.


Less than two weeks since it opened, Opera Australia has scaled back the number of shows being performed for its Melbourne production of Sunset Boulevard.

The cast has been told Tuesday performances of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical will be cancelled from next week. Sources involved in the production, not authorised to speak publicly, confirmed the move to The Age.


And


Brightman, who both inspired and originated the role of Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera, is sharing the role of Desmond with Australian performer Silvie Paladino, who until now has been performing in Tuesday evening and Wednesday matinee shows.

Originally, the Opera Australia production was being staged eight times a week over six days. Ticket prices for the Melbourne season range from $69 to $249.

As of Wednesday morning, all Tuesday performances from June 18 onwards in Melbourne had been marked as unavailable on the production’s ticketing website. Similarly, all Sunday shows starting from July 1, as well as the entire final week of Sunset Boulevard are unable to be booked. It is unclear at this stage whether this is due to further cancellations.

In a statement, Opera Australia confirmed shows had been cancelled. A spokesperson said: “The performance schedule for Sunset Boulevard’s Melbourne season is being adjusted to reflect the current market conditions.”

All ticket holders for the affected performances will be contacted.

singingbird - this has been my suspicion since 2017 with the Broadway "revival" being the semi-staged concert from ENO with Glenn Close.  
I loved it and saw it 5 times during its limited run.  But the reality was that while it sold well  it wasn't a sell-out by any stretch of the imagination.  It cleared the 90% attendance and was consistently grossing more than a million dollars a week with a 7 performance schedule.  But that was with Glenn Close and a symphony orchestra.  I felt then and there that as much as I love the score and the piece itself, it's dated to modern audiences.  The concept of "silent films" is ancient history to most audiences.  With that as the reality, it's hard for people to connect from the outset with the story.  So the Broadway audience was filled with fans of the original production, those who heard about Glenn's performance and got to see a master-class performance by a then 70 year old playing 7 times a week.

Sarah Brightman the minute I saw the ads back in October I wasn't remotely interested in seeing because I never cared for her voice or acting.  And the fact that the promo videos of this production featured Joe singing the title song and "Too Much in Love to Care" rather than the two major hit songs kind of fed into the narrative that she wasn't right for the part.  I mean even her filmed sequence saying "I am the big... its the pictures that got small" felt awkward to me.  

Nicole Scherzinger/Jamie Lloyd production got me genuinely excited and seemingly countless others on both sides of the atlantic in taking the score and story and making it more an indictment on people's fascination with being "seen" which can work in a social-media obsessed world.  And making it more raw, biting and having a cast that can sing the hell out of it, makes sense why people would want to go see this.

I don't think so. Tickets for the Starlight Express revival flew out of the door the moment they started selling them, a long time before anyone knew anything about potential updates. Sunset Boulevard keeps being revived and doing decent business (more recently in Washington for example with Stephanie J. Block and Derek Klena, although that was a very limited run, tbf).

If this production had cast a big Aussie name in the right age bracket as Norma, I'm sure tickets would have sold.

I'm a big ALW fan myself (even if perhaps not quite as obsessive as some here ) but from the 80s onwards when I first got interested in musicals I could never warm to Sarah Brightman. There had always been something artificial to her and her development with more and more esoteric shows while she herself turned into a botoxed wax work seemed to confirm that. When this was announced, i thought immediately just how wrong she was and how I had zero interest in seeing her. *

The movie industry has the expression "box office poison" for certain stars who turn people off from buying tickets - this seems to have been one such case in the musical theatre world. 

Given the right person at the right time delivering an amazing performance, Sunset Blvd can and will be a huge success - look no further than Nicole Scherzinger and the way Jamie Lloyd catered perfectly to her persona and abilities. 

* edited to add: I'm nowhere near Australia, so it was never even a possibility, but even if this had been in my town, I wouldn't have cared.