No stage fright?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

No stage fright?

The singer with the crystalline mezzosoprano seemed like a natural - and looked like a child - but at 17 she was already an established star in The Philippines, where she hosted her own television show alongside her equally musical brother. She first went onstage in Manila at seven, in The King and I, at 10 she played the lead in Annie.

“I was in a really great environment because I wasn’t the first artist in the family,” says Salonga, who this month will appear in concert at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. “There were other singers, a prima ballerina, a painter and sculptor, and everyone had achieved quite a measure of success. I had a pretty normal childhood, went to regular school and did all the things six and seven-year-olds do.”

She also would sing along at family parties, where a cousin who was in Repertory Philippines took notice. “He told my mother to bring me to an audition because they were looking for children, and that was it, really, that was the start of everything.”

She loved performing and had chutzpah to spare: at her 1988 Miss Saigon audition call-back in Manila, unintimidated by singing for the world-famous Mackintosh, Les Miserables creators Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil and director Nicholas Hytner, she fronted up with a program. “I thought, you know what, I may never see these people again, I’m going to get their autographs. Everyone laughs at it now,” she says.