STAGE TUBE: Sarah Brightman Announces Plans for Space Travel

Via a global webcast this morning, The Phantom of the Opera star Sarah Brightman, will, as rumoured, indeed be travelling into space in 2014 or 2015 for ten days on a voyage that will take her to the International Space Station. It was announced at the press conference that she had cleared all necessary medical tests, and at the completion of a 2013, 5 continent, 100 city tour would go straight into 6 months of training before her space flight.

In the video, you can watch the full announcement from Moscow!

ABC News first reported that to secure her spot on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft heading to the International Space Station, "she had to pay the Russian space agency more than the $51 million NASA budgets on average to send its astronauts to the station."

Brightman recently accepted the UNESCO nomination to be an “Artist for Peace” Ambassador for her “commitment to humanitarian and charitable causes” which she will continue to represent on this journey.

Sarah Brightman's West End debut was at the age of 13 in "I and ALbert". She orginated the role of Christine in London and in New York. Brightman has also appeardd on the West End in Nightingale and Cats, as well as the Broadway production of Aspects of Love in 1990.

Over the past two and a half decades, Sarah Brightman has distinguished herself as the world’s biggest selling soprano of all time with global sales reaching over 30 million units. She has received more than 180 gold and platinum awards in over 40 countries. Brightman pioneered the classical crossover music movement and is the only artist to have simultaneously topped the Billboard dance and classical music charts.

Brightman married composer Andrew-Llyod Webber in 1984 until 1990. She has recorded a number of solo albums, including 1988's The Trees They Grow So High, 1989's The Songs That Got Away, 1990s As I Come of Age, 1993's Dive, 1995's Fly, and 1998's Eden. And recent ones like La Luna (2001) Harem (June, 2003), Symphony (2008), A Winter Symphony (2008) and the upcoming Dreamchaser (2013).