The opera is about individuals caught up in the brutal mundanity of the machinery and power of a repressive state. Playing Tosca is the great diva Anna Netrebko, now an Austrian citizen but born Russian, and described in The Times as a symbol of cultural propaganda for the Russian regime'. The singer has criticised the war without attacking Putin personally. For individual artists caught up in this geopolitical nightmare the pressures are clearly immense.
Authoritarian governments have always suppressed protest and dissent, but democracies have done so as well. Ironically, we are now witnessing increasing restrictions on the right to protest from governments whose very foundations were built through the kinds of protest they now seek to suppress. Historically social crises reach the mainstream via protest - which can take many forms - this helps society reevaluate and evolve, making it more understanding and tolerant.
We have reported Sally Rooney to the Terrorism Police is the type of thing you'd imagine reading on Twitter in 2020, hours after the Hulu and BBC adaptation of Normal People dropped and everyone was reckoning with Paul Mescal's thighs for the first time.