(Credit: Royal Opera House official website)

The Royal Opera House has canceled the opening night of Puccini’s “Tosca” on Dec. 5 due to technical issues and increased cases of COVID-19.

The opera was set to star Bryan Hymel as Mario Cavaradossi, Alexey Markov as Scarpia, and Elena Stikhina in the title role. The cast also included Hubert Francis, Yuriy Yurchuk, Jeremy White, and Jihoon Kim. Oksana Lyniv was set to conduct a production by Jonathan Kent.

“Tosca” is now slated to open on Dec. 8, 2021, with the same cast.

The United Kingdom has been logging over 40,000 new daily COVID-19 cases for the last eight days. The company recently opened a revival of “Macbeth” with Anna Pirozzi and Simon Keenlyside.