Ideas weren’t sound

Various artists

“The Phantom of the Opera”

(Sony Classical/Really Useful Records)

**

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “The Phantom of the Opera” became a movie after years of discussion about who might play the leads. So it’s bizarre that the title role was given to an actor who doesn’t sing very well.

The soundtrack album makes this much more apparent than the movie, in which Gerard Butler’s handsome left profile diverts attention from his voice. On the album, however, the voice of the supposed “Angel of Music” sounds close to collapse, especially in the upper register.

Emmy Rossum, as his protegee, Christine, has a promising voice. She was cast at age 16, and her timbre sometimes sounds girlish. But her fresh-faced looks may have mattered more than her voice -- and again, this is more obvious on the CD than in the film.

The older diva Carlotta usually has the biggest voice onstage, and Minnie Driver -- not known for opera -- has the role. Fortunately, a soprano with an authentically operatic voice, Margaret Preece, performed Driver’s vocals -- until the end, that is. Driver sings a new song, “Learn to Be Lonely,” a pity-the-poor-Phantom pop ballad, over the closing credits -- and she sounds pretty good.

The album comes in a version with 25 tracks on two CDs, including 16 pages of color photos (but no lyrics), or in a solo CD with 14 tracks and a mere nine pages of photos.

Various artists

“Brooklyn the Musical -- Live!” (Razor & Tie)

*

The cast album of “Brooklyn,” Broadway’s only new musical of the fall season, was recorded in a live studio session. An audience audibly applauds and cheers most of the score’s presumed big moments. The album producers appear to be trying to preempt and contradict the likely reaction of most listeners -- that the lyrics are banal and the melodies formulaic.

A group of street singers relates a soapy story consisting of one trite plot turn after another -- something about a young diva from Paris who, while searching for her long-lost American father, becomes involved in an “American Idol”-style competition with another diva at Madison Square Garden.

Although the album lacks a synopsis, the story seems to be set primarily in Paris and Manhattan, not Brooklyn. But the plot is secondary to the opportunity for talented belters Eden Espinosa and Ramona Keller to let it rip.

The father (Kevin Anderson) long ago wrote a lullaby for his daughter without finishing the lyrics, so she sings most of it with only the repeated syllable “la.” If lyricists (and composers) Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson had followed his example, the album might be more bearable.