The audience at Monday night’s Tosca went all Italian, booing the director. This is almost unheard-of at the New York Met, whose patrons, like the loggionisti at any provincial Italian house, have their preferences, but are normally restrained in expressing them. (In the case of the female patrons, says a cynical friend of mine, because they’ve had their faces lifted so many times they can’t boo.)

It was a new production, replacing the 30-year-old Zeffirelli staging, which was generally agreed by everyone to be over the top, but was much loved anyway. Opera’s supposed to be over the top. Anyway, this new producer, working under newish general manager Peter Gelb, managed to offend just about everybody.

I wasn’t there myself, so I had to rely on the reviews . . . none of which told me the thing I most wanted to know: Did this trendy new production “play up” the torture scene? In the second act, the evil police chief, scheming to have his way with lovely Tosca, has her brought to his apartment. He arranges that Tosca’s boyfriend, a political prisoner, is being tortured in an adjacent room, so that Tosca can hear his groans. Hard to see how a lefty producer could pass up the chance to highlight the “relevance” of that. None of the reviews made a point of it, though, so I don’t know if the temptation was yielded to. Be glad to pass on any reports from readers present on Monday night.

Whatever was done with the torture scene, the overall impression from the reviews is that we now have an answer to the question Heather Mac Donald posed in City Journal two years ago: “Can the Met stand firm against the trashy productions of trendy nihilists?” The answer looks like “No”

[Though I should say that last night’s Marriage of Figaro — Jonathan Miller’s 1999 production — was traditional and non-outrageous. Well-played and -sung, too; though Cherubino came near to stealing the show, which seems to happen a lot with this opera.]