(Newswire.net — March 11, 2015) — ‘Phantom of the Opera’ star and space tourist Sarah Brightman is in ‘Space City’ in Moscow on the preparations for her flight to the International Space Station, where she will perform a song that her ex husband and Broadway hits composer Andrew LLoyd Weber is writing for her.
The British soprano is set to blast off on a Soyuz spacecraft on September 1, and will spend 10 days on the ISS, the Russia Today reported.
At a press conference in London, the 54-years-old singer told reporters that going to space is something “she dreamt about as a child in the 1960s.”
“We thought we were going to be astronauts. Even down to our cereal boxes, there were things about space and what we were going to do. So for me to have gotten this far and to to be able to have a taste of what I felt at that time and to be part of the future is an amazing thing,” Brightman said.
She presented a space badge that reads “Chasing Dreams Shaping Future” with Earth, moon, stars and the ISS outline behind the stylized image of a woman reachingto the stars. Beneath are the joint flags of the US, GB and Russian Federation, and the mission code “TMA 18M”.
The broadway Diva said that singing in zero gravity 420km above Earth is “much different from singing down here.” She did not share with reporters which songs she will be singing, however, she did say that she and Andrew Lloyd Webber have started working on the music, and are trying to “work out technical challenges.”
“We use the Earth to ground ourselves when we sing and the air around us. This is going to be very different. I’m trying to find a piece that is beautiful and simple in its message, as well as not complicated to sing,” Brightman said in a press conference.
In addition, Brightman disclosed that she wants to connect with other musical talents on Earth – possibly a choir, another singer, or an orchestra.
Her training in Moscow is quite demanding, Brightman said. With a six o’clock start followed by lectures, four hours of Russian lessons, and survival and physical training. This includes undergoing practical and physical approaches to exercise, and skills in medicine and emergency operating procedures.
Instead of getting more affordable, space tourism appears to be significantly more expensive as the time goes by and the technology progresses. The first space tourist, US entrepreneur Dennis Tito, paid the Russians around $20 million for his 2001 trip. The most recent tourist to the ISS was Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte, who paid $40 million for the trip in 2009, and Brightman is thought to have paid around $51 million for the trip, which includes astronaut training in Moscow’s ‘Space City’ where the first man in space Yuri Gagarin, trained for his space flight.