After a summer of institutional mishaps to raise the pulse of the most hardened spin doctor, the Royal Ballet and Opera’s new season was audible far beyond the venue. “Shame on you,” chanted protesters over a powerful PA system outside. Some, standing amid yellow and blue flags, simply held placards. “Art is not neutral,” read one. And indeed it isn’t, though opera’s entanglements in international geopolitics are rarely as visible as at Covent Garden in recent months. “It feels like crossing a picket line,” a colleague muttered grimly.
But modern opera houses are well soundproofed. By the first interval of Oliver Mears’ new production of Puccini’s Tosca with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko in the title role, the protesters had dispersed. Controversial as Netrebko’s casting has proved, the only disturbances inside the auditorium were roars of approval at the end of the opera’s best-loved numbers.
