UPDATE: La Cieca’s spy reports: He’s here!

EARLIER: Right where he’s supposed to be, a Met insider tells La Cieca. Tenor Jonas Kaufmann was either never scheduled for or else excused from rehearsals last week for the revival of Tosca, and so far as as we know, he arrived right on schedule this past weekend. He’s supposed to do a runthrough of the opera at 3 pm today, and La Cieca will have more to say on the subject after then.

Of course La Cieca realizes that the lack of rehearsal may result in Kaufmann’s inability to etch so finely detailed a character portrait as Marcelo Alvarez did

in the season. But, on the other hand, Kaufmann will not have to do the double duty of performing the production while simultaneously critiquing it, so maybe it’s all a wash.