The UK Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) has dropped a planned run of the opera Tosca in Tel Aviv after its staff signed a scathing open letter against Israel.

RBO CEO Alex Beard announced the decision to staff on August 1 in an internal message, saying, “Our new production of Tosca will not be going to Israel.”

A spokesperson for the group Artists for Palestine UK, which saw the missive, said, “This is a welcome breakthrough for institutional accountability and a victory for grassroots organizing. Across the cultural sector, too many institutions faced with genocide have opted for silence – or worse. The RBO staff’s open letter is an essential ethical uprising against this refusal to speak out.”

The Israeli Opera website has dropped a reference to the RBO’s building, commonly referred to as Covent Garden.

The decision comes after 182 staffers at RBO signed an open letter on Friday demanding that the organization “withhold productions from institutions that legitimize and economically support a state engaged in the mass killing of civilians,” and that it “reject current or future performances in Israel.”

“This decision [to hire out a separate opera, Turandot, to Tel Aviv] cannot be viewed as neutral. It is a deliberate alignment, materially and symbolically, with a government currently engaged in crimes against humanity,” it said.

“The RBO is clearly making a strong political statement by allowing its production and intellectual property to be presented in a space that openly rewards and legitimizes the very forces responsible for the daily killings of civilians in Gaza,” the staffers continued.

Beard told The Guardian that he is “appalled by the crisis in Gaza and recognizes the deep emotional impact this has had across the community and wider society.”

“On this issue, we acknowledge and respect the full range of views held by our staff, artists, and audiences,” he said.

The letter’s signatories also called on the RBO to “stand in solidarity with the performer who bravely displayed the Palestinian flag on our stage” and call for the director of opera to be “held accountable for his public display of aggression toward a performer exercising their right to express a deeply moral and political truth.”

This is referring to an incident on July 19 during which a freelance cast member, Daniel Perry, of the Royal Opera House in London, raised a Palestinian flag on stage at the end of a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore.