PUCCINI: “TOSCA.” Kiri Te Kanawa; Giacomo Aragall,...

PUCCINI: “TOSCA.” Kiri Te Kanawa; Giacomo Aragall, Leo Nucci; Welsh National Opera Chorus; National Philharmonic conducted by Sir Georg Solti. London 414 597-2 (two compact discs). Te Kanawa does more than just window shop here. This is a noble try at Puccini’s incendiary diva, for the most part rendered with uncommon opulence and palpable temperament, but the New Zealand soprano betrays her relative theatrical inexperience with Tosca by attempting all sorts of mannered coloristic effects, including the weighting of a nonexistent chest register. Aragall revels in much of his erstwhile pristine tenor, without sufficient dynamic variety. Nucci is a standard, melodramatic Scarpia, lacking true charisma. Solti hits chords with sledgehammer brutality, ferrets out often buried detail with microscopic zeal, but fails to communicate much of the score’s lyricism to his London orchestra. The sound exposes the material with clinical coldness, and the bells in the prelude to Act III smack of extreme overproduction.