When the curtain rises this week at Covent Garden and the hall resounds with the music of Puccini, the audience will see a story of love and betrayal.
The acclaimed soprano Anna Netrebko will step onto the stage as Tosca - and for some, it will be an evening of high art.
But for me and for millions of Ukrainians, every note, every tear will sound different.
Because we remember that, for decades, this singer stood alongside Vladimir Putin, the man responsible for the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian children.
Her voice on stage drowns out the real cries - the cries from destroyed maternity hospitals in Mariupol, schools in Kharkiv, kindergartens in Kramatorsk.
