Anna Netrebko electrifies in a controversial Tosca

In the event, the production was nearly hijacked by circumstance; namely, the choice of the star Russian soprano Anna Netrebko in the title role. For the record, a quick summary: Netrebko’s past associations with Vladimir Putin and her belated condemnation of the war in Ukraine sparked controversy. Even opera companies, generally strong on collaboration, cannot agree. European theatres hire her regularly. The Metropolitan Opera, New York, does not. Fears of a first night riot proved unfounded. A few flags were waved outside the Royal Opera House, the protesters courteous and heartfelt. Inside, any drama was enacted on stage only.

As significant as the new staging was the arrival, after many months as “designate”, of the company’s new music director, the 44-year-old Czech-born conductor Jakub Hrůša. Already known a little in the UK for his links with the Philharmonia and Glyndebourne, he deserved his enthusiastic reception. His skill as a musician, with a particular affinity for the music of his homeland (Dvořák, Janáček and Martinů), is eclectic and impressive. Charm is not a prerequisite for the job, but it helps. Hrůša succeeds Antonio Pappano, one of the best communicators on opera and why it matters. Signs are that Hrůša has similar gifts, vital for an art form too often misunderstood and under attack. The days are long gone when music directors could bury their head in the score and ignore the flashpoints where music and politics meet.

He slipped on to the podium without ceremony, immediately detonating the opening trombone blasts. Puccini set store by the first bars of his operas, making them anchor the action from the start. Tosca begins with three dissonant chords – the devil in music – depicting the evil chief of police, Scarpia, who rapes Tosca and then becomes her victim. Hrůša pitched them with precise, belching tension. They recur again and again, now woven into the texture, now ugly and overt. The Royal Opera orchestra was punchy and alert throughout, strings furious in attack, brass and woodwind finding fresh colours in a score they know inside out.

Mears’s stark approach, designed by Simon Lima Holdsworth (with lighting by Fabiana Piccioli, costumes by Ilona Karas), is far from the Napoleonic-era setting of Victorien Sardou’s original 1887 play. The visual touchstone is postwar, post-fascist Italy, with a hint of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita in the overlap of habitual religiosity, seedy power and TV-era modernity. Whereas Kent’s staging was so luxurious the eye was sometimes diverted from the action, Mears opts for minimal: first a bomb-damaged church, then an empty office, finally a killing chamber, tiles grubby and bloodstained. Expanses of veined marble make a chilly backdrop. The drama is cleanly stencilled, instantly comprehensible.

Netrebko first sang Tosca at the New York Met in April 2018. Is she still the right choice for the role? The broad answer is yes. Her acting is impetuous rather than nuanced, but she holds the stage. Occasionally, her intonation wavers (as can any singer’s), but her voice is lush, voluptuous, opulent, especially in the middle and bottom registers. Her desperate Act 2 exchanges with Gerald Finley’s oily Scarpia showed her at her electrifying best. Finley, in double-breasted suit, oozing sleaze, has created a reptilian Scarpia. This bass-baritone’s natural tendency towards intelligence and lyricism finds its way into the police chief’s character – his language, while vile, is also oddly poetic – making him a yet more intriguing villain.

By comparison, the third main character, Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, barely has a chance to show his personality. From blithe painter to unwitting accomplice to tortured prisoner is a short step in the drama. As sung by the British-Italian tenor Freddie De Tommaso, he nonetheless deserves top billing at Covent Garden, with fearless singing, hanging on to a top B with defiant ease, as if dead hanging from a bar. The rest of the cast, led by Ossian Huskinson (Angelotti) and Alessandro Corbelli (Sacristan), boasted an excellent chorus, with extras and actors for the grand Te Deum scene. It’s early days for the production, which certainly worked on first encounter. The Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak takes over the title role this week. Netrebko returns to sing in Turandot in December.

At the Barbican, Hrůša’s predecessor Pappano launched his second season with the London Symphony Orchestra with two large-scale American works: Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No 3 “Kaddish” (1963, revised 1977), dedicated to the memory of John F Kennedy, and Aaron Copland’s Symphony No 3 (1946). The “Kaddish”, with its mix of music and speech, is not easy to pull off. Here, the combination of London Symphony Chorus, Tiffin Boys’ Choir, soprano Katharina Konradi and, especially, Felicity Palmer as narrator, achieved blazing and affecting coherence.

Copland’s Third is a work of ebullient postwar optimism, its final movement based on the composer’s Fanfare for the Common Man. In the week the US president made his second UK state visit, this mighty pair of works could scarcely have been more pertinent.

Tosca runs at the Royal Opera House, London, until 7 October

Photograph by ROH/Marc Brenner/Mark Allan