Hidden in an extended entry for your convenience, as I'm aware not everybody wishes to hear me ramble about music :P

I have, ah, acquired the original cast recording version of the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. Mostly out of curiosity, since I kept seeing rabid fangirls everywhere going "OMG [insert anything that isn't the original cast recording here, especially the new movie] SUCKS, listen to the original cast recording, Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford rock!"

Well.

*shudder*

I've just started listening to it, and already I'm cringing. Dear GOD, the suck, it is mighty and powerful indeed.

Sarah Brightman sounds far too preoccupied with her own voice ("hey! lookit me! I'm good! I can reach high notes! I'm a soprano! oooo! lookit me!"), which isn't all that brilliant to begin with (she sounds like somebody's just raped her throat with a steel brush), and can't carry a phrase to save her own life - she's not paying attention to the lyrics at all, just to the aforementioned "oo! lookit me! I'm good!". So she breathes and makes pauses in all the wrong places. Which is all well and good when you're singing just for the sake of it, but when you're supposed to be, you know, showing emotions and telling a story with your voice... eesh. Bloody hell, I could pull off a better Christine than that, and I've not sung properly in ages. (I do have the range required, if you're wondering.)
As for Michael Crawford... well, he's slightly better (hard to be worse than Sarah Brightman), but his voice sounds all wrong (though I can't put my finger on exactly why), plus... well. He doesn't sound dark and dangerous as much as "buck-toothed, ugly, insolent youngster gloating and bullying somebody into doing things for him". Think "stereotypical Dracula" and you'll be quite close, too. He's also overly impressed with his own voice, like Sarah Brightman is. Plus he gets his vowels all wrong. >< And he has no sense of volume - he keeps doing this (let me just approximate with font size):

And though you turn from me, to glance behind... the PhAAAAAntom of the Opera is there... inside your mind...

It makes me cringe, for obvious reasons. :P I don't know if he does it because he wants to or because he was told to (in the latter case it's even worse), either way, it sucks.

I'm almost afraid to keep listening now... I think I'll continue though. Call it morbid curiosity and masochistic desire to see how much they've mauled the rest of this.