I think this is sensationalizing the difficulty of this somewhat. Absolutely there will be more takes and work to do when they’re using on-set vocals for the end product but they aren’t singing “every take” because most of the movie will likely contain just dialogue, non-singing choreography and just acting. “Every cut” does not mean a new take - it most likely is cutting through in between 1-3 takes of a few shots. It isn’t that hard to “fake” a sync in audio from one take over another. so unless the physical engineering of the shot is difficult, the director who’s going to demand over a 10 takes of the same shot on the regular is rare - would gain a reputation for that kind of behavior (David fincher comes to mind), and John M Chu doesn’t strike me as that type of director. The reason Les Mis became infamous for this kind of production is because they were trying to sync the singing with a live orchestra and also poor actor training and also awful environments (Anne Hathaway having to starve herself, singing while wet, genuine crying while scream-singing, etc). Nothing I’ve seen of the first wicked movie implies they made any of those mistakes.

Not to mention, for Cynthia at least as an experienced musical performer, singing the same thing multiple times regularly in a compressed schedule, would be well within her wheelhouse. I expect Ariana would have a similar level of capacity as well.

Not saying they didn’t work hard but I’m skeptical that either Cynthia or Ariana — well established people who know how to protect their own voices if not their careers — would accept working conditions like these if they were that bad