Original Broadway Cast, 2024 (Sony Masterworks Broadway) (1 / 5)  Fans hailed Eden Espinosa’s return to Broadway in Lempicka and fawned over pre-released songs from the score, such as “Woman Is,”’ that showed off her powerful vocal instrument. Unfortunately, the show was a dud — an unfocused and unpleasant musical that appeared to be far more interested in the soap opera aspects of the title character’s life than her art. First-time listeners to this cast recording might be taken aback by the techno music and harsh orchestrations used in the overture, especially if they have any background knowledge about the show’s subject: Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, whose most notable works were completed in the 1920s and ’30s in the Art Deco style, of which she was a pioneer. Composer Matt Gould seems to have written electronic music with rhythmic, focused beats for this score as a way of reflecting the hard-edged style of Lempicka’s art. Perhaps this is justifiable for the numbers in which Lempicka is learning to paint and developing her style, but as the show’s plot proceeds, and both her marriage and her extra-marital affair begin to fall apart, the emotional turmoil is accompanied by jarringly upbeat music more fit for a dance club. Espinosa impressively belts her way through the mediocre material, and two other pluses of the album are the textured, beautiful voices of Amber Iman and Andrew Samonsky as, respectively, Lempicka’s muse/lover and her husband, the latter doing his best with the show’s most poorly written character. These three share a love triangle that takes up most of the focus in the overstuffed plot and score. Lempicka closed very quickly on Broadway, and this recording seems unlikely to become a treasured cast album of a flop. A final note: Beth Leavel in the role of The Baroness gets one song here — the show’s 11 o’clock number, “Just This Way” — and she makes the most of it. — Forrest Hutchinson