While Tosca might feel like an overly safe and – dare I say it? – dull first choice by the notoriously effervescent and charismatic conductor, its popularity and the reliability of this production mean that any unwelcome distractions or controversies were unlikely to affect his full introduction to Parisian audiences. The presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and several of his ministers on opening night underlined the importance attached to the occasion.

Why review this rerun, especially as I wrote about its first reprise in 2016? Because it has been chosen to launch the 2022-23 season and, more importantly, it marks the official conducting debut of the Opéra de Paris’s new music director, Gustavo Dudamel.

In other words, it is a production more likely to stand the test of time than other more provocative or modish stagings. It also respects the opera’s original 1800 setting during the Napoleonic Wars. Pierre Audi’s 2014 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, revived in 2016 and again now at the Bastille, is fast becoming a stalwart of the Opéra de Paris’s repertoire, and it is easy to see why: with a set that is both large enough to fill the deep, wide stage, it is not disconcertingly avant-garde enough to shock the generally conservative Puccini opera-going public.

Tosca (Saloa Hernández) stands over the body of the evil Scarpia (Bryn Terfel).

Tosca opera paris