Oliver Mears's new staging of Puccini's Tosca opened at Covent Garden with Anna Netrebko in the title role and Jakub Hrůša conducting.
Anna Netrebko sang the title role when Oliver Mears’s new staging of Puccini’s Tosca opened at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on Thursday 11 September 2025. Jakub Hrůša conducted throughout.
Puccini toyed with Victorien Sardou’s melodrama La Tosca, written for Sarah Bernhardt, from the early 1890s. He began serious work only after La bohème in 1896.
The opera premiered at Rome’s Teatro Costanzi in 1900. Critics disliked its brutality, but the public took to it at once. Its best-known music includes Tosca’s prayer “Vissi d’arte” and Cavaradossi’s lament “E lucevan le stelle”.
Mears, the house’s director of opera, set his staging in a contemporary, war-torn Rome. It replaced Jonathan Kent’s production, which the house had played the previous November. The first night was the Royal Opera’s 561st performance of the work, and the run closed on Tuesday 7 October.
Netrebko, born in Krasnodar and trained at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, sang Tosca on four nights. Aleksandra Kurzak took the role for the rest, apart from one night when Ailyn Pérez replaced her. Freddie De Tommaso was Cavaradossi and Gerald Finley sang Scarpia on every night.