Though not regarded as an opera specialist, the roving conductor Daniel Harding swept into his latest posting as music director of Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with three concert performances of one of the repertoire’s biggest chestnuts, Tosca. Microphones were conveniently on hand.
He starts, like Puccini’s opera, with a bang and a flourish, and an orchestral sound so heavily upholstered with strings and brass that it made one online commentator think of Bruckner. Some of his tempos also have a Brucknerian touch. If Harding in his other career as an Air France pilot adopted the slow crawl of Cavaradossi’s aria E lucevan le stelle, the poor passengers would never get anywhere.
Few people attend an opera, however, solely to listen to the orchestra. The soloists here are lustrous and forceful: necessary qualities when its music and melodramatic libretto consistently go over the top. As the luckless painter Cavaradossi, Jonathan Tetelman is loud and fervent, though overall I detected more posturing than genuine emotion. The other corners of the opera’s love triangle balance requirements more persuasively. Ludovic Tézier’s police chief Scarpia is properly creepy and loathsome, while Eleonora Buratto sings her heart out as Tosca, the diva whom too many people adore.
Sound effects prove hit and miss: the rifle shots that dispatch Cavaradossi sound like a fireworks factory exploding, but his previous cries, from Scarpia’s torture chamber, seem to emanate from a small cupboard far away. Puccini, thank goodness, is on top form from first note to last. And Daniel Harding? So-so. (Deutsche Grammophon)
★★★☆☆
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