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A<\/span>fter a summer of institutional mishaps<\/a> to raise the pulse of the most hardened spin doctor, the Royal Ballet and Opera\u2019s new season was audible far beyond the venue. \u201cShame on you,\u201d chanted protesters<\/a> over a powerful PA system outside. Some, standing amid yellow and blue flags, simply held placards. \u201cArt is not neutral,\u201d read one. And indeed it isn\u2019t, though opera\u2019s entanglements in international geopolitics are rarely as visible as at Covent Garden in recent months. \u201cIt feels like crossing a picket line,\u201d a colleague muttered grimly.<\/p>\n But modern opera houses are well soundproofed. By the first interval of Oliver Mears\u2019 new production of Puccini\u2019s Tosca with Russian soprano Anna Netrebko in the title role, the protesters had dispersed. Controversial as Netrebko\u2019s casting has proved<\/a>, the only disturbances inside the auditorium were roars of approval at the end of the opera\u2019s best-loved numbers.<\/p>\n As the first collaboration between Mears \u2013 the organisation\u2019s director of opera \u2013 and its new music director Jakub Hr\u016f\u0161a<\/a>, as well as RBO\u2019s first new production of Tosca in almost 20 years, this was always going to be a high-stakes season opening. The house lights were dimmed only a fraction of a second before Hr\u016f\u0161a landed Puccini\u2019s opening orchestral chords, gleaming and bottom-heavy. The curtain rises on a monumental chapel interior: walls of white marble, a heap of rubble and broken pews on one side, Cavaradossi\u2019s painting-in-progress on the other. There is more marble in Scarpia\u2019s palace (forbiddingly cavernous, dominated by a vast wall clock) while the white tiling of Act 3\u2019s torture-chamber-with-a-view is stained from punishments past.<\/p>\n