Phantom Of The Opera

I stumbled across this CD at Ross for 3.99. Being a complete POTO phan, I obviously bought it.

The biggest thing that bugs me about this recording is... who is the cast????? I would love to learn a name of two about the people that were in this.

As for the songs themselves... In my humble opinion, the overture is simply dreadful. No BOOM, no feeling, no speed, no passion. Although it does provide a gorgeous image of a delapitated chandelier slowly rising above an audience with many rugged pauses along the way. Christine's voice is odd. At times, I love her interpretation, but at others I receive little shudders of "WT-?" through my body.

However, this album deserves four stars if not for the phantom(s?)'s voice itself. I have had the honour of seeing Howard MG, Matt Cammelle, Jon Ian Bourg, and Brad Little perform, in addition to hearing most recordings out in existence. The talented phantom in this CD is most definately ranked in the top five. Emotion. Squee.

For the price that it is offered, I suggest that everyone should try this CD... if not to simply try something new.

I am an avid Phantom of the Opera fan, so when I saw this in the store for $4.99 I just had to get it. I will refer to that version as Version A. A few weeks later, I was getting ready to go on a trip and I was browsing the music section of my local discount store when I saw a similar item for only $2.99, which I'll refer to as Version B. The deal was too good to pass up! So I bought Version B, got in the car and popped it in the CD player.. and was stunned. I knew these songs! I knew the singers! They were from Version A and they were exactly the same! A quick comparison of the two and a flip through Version B's booklet reassured this fact. I was so happy that I finally found the singers for this great little tribute. Even better, Version B includes the Stage Door Players' version of Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again which in itself was worth the $2.99 I payed for a bunch of songs I already had.

So, to put it in a nutshell, while I don't know who plays which role and so on and so forth, the people who recorded and performed this are called The Stage Door Players. Google them, their website is the first result you'll see. And if you search for Stage Door Players here on Amazon, you can find Version B, which includes Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again (but does not include The Music of the Night).

Now that I've cleared that up, I really enjoyed this release overall. I don't think anything will ever beat the French cast from the 2004 movie for me, but I felt that this version stood up very well on its own. It was a nice rendition and I appreciated it for what it was. The only reason I give it four stars instead of five is because they could've put somewhere on the CD who performed these songs, and they could've included Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again. The Phantom was not my favorite, but I got used to him after awhile.

I would recommend purchasing this since it's so cheap. It's a good buy for the music that you get. But my advice to you is this: if you're a hardcore Phantom fan or you just like this recording, also get the other version that I mentioned before. Once again, you can just type Stage Door Players and you'll see it.

I actually thought this was a very good budget release: having already seen the Broadway play in NYC, bought the DVD, the special edition two-pack soundtrack from the movie, and full original cast recording, I still wanted more: this CD is an entertaining re-record of the popular hits...sure, the cast is unknown, but I enjoyed this CD, especially at the super-cheap price: worth checking out if you are a big Phantom fan!