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Composer Webber to Visit O.C.

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It’s official. The unofficial Lord of London plans to accompany his wife, Sarah Brightman, when she arrives in Orange County next month to begin an 11-day engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, the mega-star composer (“Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats”) who flits about the world in a private jet, owns London’s Palace theater, holes up with his nightingale-bride in a deluxe duplex in London’s Belgravia Tower (and in a 12-room suite in New York’s Trump Tower, in a waterfront compound at St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera, in a storybook spread in Newbury outside of London), will check into the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point on Nov. 6.

Local music mavens are ecstatic. The society set is swooning. And the possibilities for celebrating the presence of the platinum couple seem endless.

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For starters, Center officials have already started the ball rolling on a big bash to fete Brightman after “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” officially opens Nov. 8. The site: Scott’s Seafood Grill & Bar in Costa Mesa, a 15,000-square-foot fresh-fish palace paved with 96,000 squares of mesquite.

On the guest list? The who’s who of Center donors, including its Stars support group and board of trustees.

And plans for an intimate gathering hosted by Center Chairman Henry Segerstrom, his wife, Renee, and Center President Thomas Kendrick and his wife, Center Manager Judy Morr, are on the drawing board. “I think you can be assured there will be some small parties,” Kendrick says. Where? Nobody’s talking, but since the Center opened three years ago, the Segerstroms and the Kendricks have regularly entertained its brightest stars at the for-members-only Center Club in Costa Mesa.

The idea of rubbing elbows with Lloyd Webber, 41, and Brightman, 29, (who adores parties, says her publicity handmaid, Merle Frimark), even has Henry Segerstrom widening his worldly eyes. “The world is recognizing what we have here,” says Segerstrom, adding that his favorite tune from “Phantom of the Opera,” which he caught on Broadway, is “All I Ask of You.”

Kendrick and Morr went to Toronto this summer to see “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” when it previewed in Vancouver and Toronto, breaking box office records in both places.

“We thought it was one of the most interesting performances we’d seen in a long time,” Kendrick says of the show that features Brightman singing both solo and with a choral ensemble. “So we got it booked here and then it started getting booked all over the country. Now it has a major national tour going.”

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Kendrick notes that $60,000 in advance ticket sales for Brightman’s performance were generated last Sunday. “There was a long line at the Center all day,” he says. (Tickets are still available.)

This week, Brightman is performing the show in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre. After her performance Wednesday night, the couple was feted at a party staged by the Windy City’s British Consortium.

Before the duo fly to San Francisco, where Brightman is scheduled to appear at the Golden Gate Theatre Oct. 31-Nov. 5, they plan to stop in Las Vegas to see “Cats” at the Thomas and Mack CenterA at the University of Nevada.

And “Cats” brings us to the beginning of our story.

If it wasn’t for the musical Lloyd Webber based on a book of poems by T.S. Elliot, Brightman might never have snared her very own composing superstar.

But it was punked-out London in 1981, and Brightman saw an ad inviting artists who thought they “had something unusual about themselves” to audition for “Cats.”

Brightman had something unusual, all right. She had fright-wig blue hair. So she auditioned, landed a minor role, and the rest, as they say, is storybook history.

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Brightman’s hair is a deep shade of chocolate brown now, and she has exchanged flowing, earth-tone silhouettes for the deep-purple leotards she once wore. The new and assured Brightman, Thomas Kendrick says, “is a star on the edge of superstardom.”

Although she adores dining out-- she worships sushi, he prefers gourmet fare--she’ll resist the temptation to overdo during her engagement here, Frimark says. “She’s cautious about her health. All singers feel their lives are not really their own. They worry about losing their voice. If that goes, no show!”

For Lloyd Webber, the “show” began in London in 1967 when he wrote “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” “Jesus Christ Superstar” followed, with 3,357 performances in London and more than 700 in New York. “Jeeves,” his next musical, fared poorly, but then he had a mega-hit in 1978 with “Evita,” a semi-fictional account of the life of Eva Peron of Argentina. After that it was “Cats,” then “Song and Dance,” “Starlight Express,” and “Requiem,” written to commemorate the death of his father. Then came “Phantom of the Opera,” and now “Aspects of Love.”

And right now, for Brightman, there’s “The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Watch for Lloyd Webber to watch over his porcelain-skinned spouse on opening night when she sings 15 selections from his repertoire.

“Andrew likes to make sure the orchestra is in place,” Frimark says. “He checks the acoustics, the sound board, makes sure everything is just right. He’s extremely involved in this production. Music and Sarah Brightman are his passions.”

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