‘Putin’s Diva’ sparked protests – but she brought star-power to Tosca ...Middle East

Nicknamed “Putin’s Diva”, Netrebko has been exiled by many international houses for her refusal to criticise the Russian President directly, and has recently responded by taking the Metropolitan Opera to court for discrimination.  

How to get out from under the headlines? Hrusa understood the assignment. House lights plunged to black without warning as those first thuggish chords landed their blows – no polite applause or preamble here, just a sucker-punch of sound from an orchestra that sounded like it had spent the summer in the gym: brass buffed, strings bulked, a gleaming beast of a band.

Where Jonathan Kent’s classic staging favoured antique verisimilitude, Oliver Mears and designer Simon Lima Holdsworth have gone sleek 20th-century shock-and-awe (Photo: Marc Brenner)

Where Kent favoured antique verisimilitude, Mears and designer Simon Lima Holdsworth have gone sleek 20th-century shock-and-awe. There’s marble by the quarry-load, plenty of mid-century styling and nods to Fellini, roughed up by just enough Pasolini: a wipe-clean execution suite for Act III and a properly nasty death for Scarpia. Act I’s ruined church – tree branches bursting in through the dome, rubble piled high even before a bombing raid adds auxiliary percussion to the Te Deum – is a handsome highlight, though which conflict these camo-clad soldiers and their families are sheltering from is anyone’s guess.

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There’s plenty of heat with De Tommaso who, if he sometimes pushes harder than is necessary, has bags of style to dress up his handsome, oaky tenor. Royal Opera regular Gerald Finley fills out Puccini’s love-hate-triangle as a greasy bureaucrat of a Scarpia: a subtle, understated performance that belongs in another cast.

‘Tosca’ is at the Royal Opera House until 7 September

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