Soprano Superstar: How Sarah Brightman turned her life around

Black leather is the last thing you would

associate with Sarah Brightman, but here

she is in my New York hotel room in her

sexy Dolce & Gabbana jacket, jeans and the

thick-soled biker boots in which she often

marches around Manhattan instead of

being driven around like a diva.

The

signature Pre-Raphaelite ringlets have

recently been trimmed and smoothed, perfectly

complementing the cool new Gothic look of this eternally

baby-faced artist, who's now an astonishing 47 going on 37.

"I have the sort of round face that you complain about

when you're younger, but which serves you well as you get

older," says Sarah with a giggle, as she settles down beside

me and plays mother with the teapot.

It's easy to see why

she's so laid-back.

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Sarah Brightman, 47, has survived divorce, family tragedy and unsuccessful IVF to emerge as a global star

Once typecast as Andrew Lloyd Webber's

big-eyed, toothy toy girl, Sarah now seems to have taken

over the globe as the world's bestselling soprano.

And

not only is she basking in the satisfaction of having sold

more than 26 million albums and two million DVDs in 34

countries - as a pioneer of pop opera - but she also has

a sexy new boyfriend, 41-year-old Bulgarian-born,

German-raised Louis Oberleander.

Next Saturday Andrew Lloyd Webber will

celebrate his 60th birthday with a lavish party,

but his ex-wife is unlikely to be having an

operatic hissy-fit at not being there.

The cover

of her ambitious new album, Symphony,

depicts a diaphanously clad, wild-haired

Sarah looking like an escaped sea-nymph.

It's a confident new style, and a sure sign of

how much Sarah has vamped up her image

since she stopped being Mrs Lloyd Webber.

The man in Sarah's life, 41-year-old Bulgarian-born, Louis Oberleander

"I was quite middle-aged when I was younger,"

she says.

"I always felt older than my years,

maybe because I was married to someone

older.

"I think it's typical of women when they

love someone that they move themselves into

that person's life and go with that.

"But when

I moved from Britain to Germany at the

beginning of the 1990s, all my friends were

involved with techno, and suddenly I was being

introduced to younger types of music and a

different way of doing things.

"And I'm having a

lot of fun now."

It certainly sounds like it, even if the

Los Angeles-based Louis lives on the other

side of America from Sarah, whose main home

is an apartment in Manhattan's Upper East

Side.

She meets Louis every few weeks

either there or in LA, where she also has a

small place - as well as homes in Miami,

France, Italy and London.

I told you she

was successful: this is a woman who managed

to sell more records than even Elton John

or the Rolling Stones when she became

America's highest-selling British artist in 2000.

What a role model Sarah is for

divorcées everywhere, having made so much money on her own that she offered to hand back the multimillion-pound divorce settlement she received

from Sir Andrew.

And now she is sure enough of herself to be the older

partner in the relationship for a change.

"Sometimes I tease

Louis about being ahead of him in years, although he's

much calmer than I am and keeps me very level," she points

out.

"And it's special when we get together. That's the thing

about a long-distance relationship, you don't take each

other for granted.

"To have that space sometimes is really

nice, so when you meet up again it's like a second

honeymoon in a way.

"He's in the music business too,

with his own computer-music consultancy.

"He's an

extremely beautiful geek with the most lovely blue eyes

and dark colouring.

"I met him just over a year ago at a

recording studio in Germany and I feel very easy and happy

with him. And it's wonderful to have a person around who's

so computer-friendly," she adds.

He sounds fantastic (does he put up shelves as well?).

But what about the trust element, in a relationship where

they are so geographically separated for much of the time?

Sarah is relaxed about this, too.

"You have to trust each

other - there's no point in worrying about that

or you would just drive yourself mad," she says.

"I couldn't go through anybody's e-mails -

I would never check on someone."

But then there's a free-spirited air about this

musical nomad these days.

"I don't think I

would get married again; I don't know if I'm a

very good candidate because of all the touring

I do," says the twice-divorced Sarah, who was

already married to another Andrew (Graham

Stewart, a music manager) when she and

Lloyd Webber (also married, to Sarah Hugill)

first clapped eyes on each other across a

crowded Cats rehearsal-room in 1981.

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Sarah with then husband Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1996. The soprano received £6m in alimony but later offered to hand it back

"I don't

expect anything anyway if I meet a nice new

partner. I just take it day by day, enjoy it and

see what happens."

There's an almost Victorian sweetness about

her that makes it easy to see why Lloyd Webber

created the role of Christine in Phantom of the

Opera for her.

They married in 1984 and

separated in 1990, with a divorce in 1991 that

effectively ended her UK stage career. Andrew

married his present wife, Madeleine Gurdon,

soon afterwards.

As the Svengali behind

Sarah's theatrical success, the composer cast

such a long shadow that she had to leave

Britain after the divorce to re-establish herself in

her own right.

And, boy, has she worked hard at

it - in all sorts of surprising directions - with a

thrilling range of musical moods on Symphony

and the release next month of her film-acting

debut in the musical thriller Repo! The Genetic

Opera.

Among the cast for a film that has been

described as Rocky Horror meets Blade Runner

are Paris Hilton and former Buffy star Anthony

Head.

"I feel very Gothic in my soul," explains Sarah, who even plans to make her

film-directing debut next year, but is keeping

shtoom about the details for now.

She was always driven and dedicated to a

future in show business.

The eldest of four girls

and two boys born to property tycoon

Grenville Brightman and his wife Paula, the

Hertfordshire-raised Sarah trained in classical

ballet at Elmhurst, studied jazz and acting at Arts

Educational, and went straight into the Top of the

Pops dance group Pan's People at 16.

A year later

she teamed up with their raunchier ITV counterpart

Hot Gossip, with whom she had a chart hit in 1978

with 'I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper'.

When she and Lloyd Webber became an item a few

years later, the snobs had a field day, sneering

about the composer and the showgirl and ignoring

her serious vocal training at the prestigious Juilliard

Conservatoire.

"Well, I was a showgirl," she agrees

mildly, refusing to be miffed.

"I'm philosophical

about bad press - I used to find the way that

Spitting Image lampooned Andrew and me quite

funny.

"I had been overexposed in a particular way

because my marriage to an extremely successful

older man meant I was involved in his public life

as well as my own.

"So when we split up I needed

to start again. It was scary, but it turned out fine."

It can't have been an easy time for her,

especially when her father committed suicide soon

afterwards in 1992, following the collapse of his

property business and his divorce from her

mother. Sarah responded by throwing herself

back into work.

As she explains, "Work is what

keeps me together.

"I just take it day by day and

that's how I deal with everything."

And there was a new life for her after Lloyd Webber, as well as a

new career, when she began dating German

music producer Frank Peterson after moving

to Hamburg.

That relationship ended a few

years ago, but not before Sarah had undergone

gruelling fertility treatment in an attempt to get pregnant

before it was too late.

"After having an ectopic pregnancy and two miscarriages

with Frank, I went through the whole IVF thing too - but it

just wasn't meant to be," she says.

"IVF was actually a

very good thing to do because at least I know that I did

absolutely everything I could.

"I went through the last

treatment about three years ago, but when it didn't work out

I was very calm and thought, 'OK, that's fine, I'll just get on

with everything else.'

"Otherwise it takes over your life and

consumes you.

"And I'm in fulfilled in other ways because I

have five lovely nieces and two nephews," adds Sarah, who

also sees a lot of Louis's two children from his previous

marriage - Pola, 18, and Reuben, 14 - when they come over

from their mother's home in Germany.

She's a stoical woman, who seems to cope with setbacks

by resolutely living in the moment.

She even has the enviable

knack of staying friends with her exes: not only has Frank

Peterson produced Symphony, but Sarah is due to sing a Lloyd Webber piece at the Classical Brit Awards

in London in May, and even dined a deux with

Andrew recently in Manhattan.

"It was just the

two of us, but everybody knew we were there -

there were no secrets," she says, giggling.

"I have

a nice friendship with Andrew. Madeleine is a

great character, and she and Andrew are a very

sweet couple."

Andrew once admitted that he fell in love with

the pearly purity of Sarah's voice before he fell in

love with her as a woman. Since her mature voice

is even richer, it could be that he's still in love with

her in a sense.

She laughs again, before replying

diplomatically, "I don't know about that. But if you

get on well with your ex-partner, there's always a

familiarity - and a love stays there."

She doesn't mourn the fact she missed out on

being Lady Lloyd Webber by just one year when

he received his peerage in 1992.

"Titles don't mean

a lot to me," she shrugs.

Certainly her offer to hand

back the £6 million alimony she was awarded on

their divorce must have earned her quite a few

Brownie points (Heather Mills McCartney, take

note).

"I needed the help to start with because I

was on my own and had to get back on my feet.

But I got to a point where I was working a lot and

doing all right and had the confidence to let go.

"So I did offer it back to him, and he said, 'No, no, that

was for you - you were with me all that time and

you went through those things, so...'" she recalls.

So she kept the money - but also her dignity.

This is one baby-face who has come a long

way, peforming a duet with José Carreras, at

Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, and another with

Andrea Bocelli on 'Time to Say Goodbye', which

earned her an entry in The Guinness Book of

Records as the bestselling single in German

recording history.

And speaking of those

age-defying looks, she says that her only cosmetic

surgery has been liposuction in her early 20s (to remove

what she calls "a baby-fat pad" under her chin) and a crown

on one front tooth that got chipped when she fell over at 17.

"I used to hate my prominent teeth as a child because I wore

braces all the time, but now I think it's a very English trait that

can look sexy.

"I don't force myself to exercise, I find going to

gyms really boring," she says.

"I find it easier to go for a fast

walk or a jog in Central Park. I wear sensible shoes because

my ballet dancing left me with a bunion on one foot after all

the pointe exercises."

It's hard to square her success with her down-to-earth

normality as I watch her prepare to pound the streets of

Manhattan in those boots that were made for walking.

Like Kylie, she has reinvented herself and found a whole new

audience. Good for her.

"I'm just enjoying myself and creating

a freedom for myself.

"I like to experiment. Failure doesn't

bother me; I believe it gives you freedom to try out other

things. And I feel lucky, I really do."

• Sarah Brightman's album Symphony will be released

on 14 April on Charisma/Manhattan EMI.