The Met in Japan

"Artists are certainly not necessarily the most stable strata of human society," Peter Gelb said at a news conference in Tokyo today, explaining why several singers — Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann among them — dropped out of the Met's tour of Japan over radiation fears. (Independent measurements show such fears to be unfounded.) The Met is sending a powerful message of sympathy in undertaking the tour, and I imagine that Japanese listeners will reward them loudly.