From the charts to the climate crisis, opera singer Sarah Brightman reflects on her career

The soprano made her theatre debut in the West End in Cats in 1981. Today she has sold more than 25 million albums and two million DVDs.

Transcript

00:00 Sarah Brightman, one of the biggest names on the international music scene, offered

00:07 a magical evening to attendees of this year's Sani Festival, Stars on the Hill in Greece.

00:15 The award-winning and world's best-selling soprano with an angelic voice exceeding three

00:21 octaves was adored by the audience, who flooded the hill of Sani Resort in Kassandra, Halkidiki.

00:29 The British superstar was a pioneer in the classical crossover music scene, but where

00:34 did her story start?

00:37 Nothing was calculative in what I did. I started off training to be a ballerina many years

00:44 ago. It was all my mother knew what to do, because she was a dancer herself. And I think

00:51 through that, through the ballet that I did every day, I loved the music, so it stayed

00:55 within me. Then with the fusion of my understanding of music from the 60s and 70s, and there was

01:02 a lot of fusion of classical and rock and everything then, I sort of just very naturally

01:09 started to integrate everything.

01:12 The multi-award winning soprano was designated Artist for Peace by UNESCO. In her opinion,

01:18 the most urgent issue on the planet now is the climate crisis.

01:25 We're not powerful to be changing the climate. It's not us. But what we do need to do, because

01:31 the climate is always, if you go right back in the past, before humans beings were even

01:36 around, you find that it has done, it's getting very hot, very cold. So that was going to

01:42 happen anyway. What we need to do is clean up our act. We really do, so that we can adapt

01:49 to climate change, which is going to happen anyway.

01:54 If an exceptional music career is not enough, Brightman has also accomplished many things

01:58 in different fields. So is there anything else on her bucket list?

02:05 Because my career is so, it's very full on, and you have to give a lot to it. I keep my

02:18 own life incredibly simple, and I find a lot of fun and beauty in actually very simple

02:25 things, because actually there's a depth in the most simple things, and they can be most

02:33 extraordinary. I've kept my life in a good sort of grounded place, so I'm part of up

02:39 there, and I'm very much part of down here.

02:43 The star's tour schedule continues in the autumn with a series of concerts in Canada

02:48 and the United States.

02:50 [Music]

02:52 ♪ Gone ♪

02:54 (whooshing)