Sarah Brightman & The London Symphony Orchestra - Time To Say Goodbye (1997)

In the pop music world of the 1950s and 1960s, when you scored a hit single, you used to put together an album featuring the hit as the title song, with the disc filled out by soundalike songs that, with any luck, might give you a follow-up hit. Apparently, the world of contemporary classical crossover isn't much different. Sarah Brightman, who enjoyed a European hit with "Time to Say Goodbye," her duet with Andrea Bocelli, constructed an album beginning with that recording and continuing in kind. The characteristics of the hit -- a lush, melodramatic, mock-operatic arrangement complete with a crescendo out of Ravel's "Bolero" and soaring voices singing in English and Italian -- are repeated here, whether the material is drawn from Puccini, the Gipsy Kings, or Queen. The result is thus not as eclectic as you might at first suppose, and anyone suspecting that Brightman continues to find ways to restate her performances of Phantom of the Opera would not be far wrong. (Which is not to say that the formula doesn't work, as this album enjoyed a healthy run at the top of the classical crossover charts.)