The Met promises eight months from now a new production of Tosca and insiders are already betting that Kristine Opolais as the titular Roman diva will be replaced before opening night.

A review of the “bitterly disappointing” new production of the Puccini melodrama at the Baden-Baden festival sighs, “It is all too depressing. The singers sound ragged and tired. . . . Opolais wildly overdoes the part of diva playing diva, her voice as small and strained as her gesticulations are self-conscious.”

Photo by Monika Rittershaus