The Show will go On! Banzai for the Met!

The opera will go on! Hurray for the general manager!

Here's some background about the situation from reporter Eric Talmadge in Tokyo:

"Gelb said the Met struggled with whether to go ahead with the performances, planned years in advance.

Last month, David Brenner, an expert on low-dose radiation, was brought in from Columbia University to meet with the company. He informed them that radiation levels in Tokyo had returned to their pre-tsunami norm, and that the airplane trip or a simple X-ray would probably lead to greater exposure than the stay in Japan.

"There are cities in Europe with higher levels," Gelb said Brenner told the performers.


According to Mr. Talmadge, all but three performers decided it's safe to be in Tokyo and even safer to be in Nagoya (also on the concert tour), and replacements have been found for the three stars who canceled.

Opera Can Be Unpredictable: True or False?

I vote for true!

The cancellation is disappointing, but understandable. I love this way of reframing a difficult situation:

"Two of the biggest stars of New York's Metropolitan Opera have bowed out of a Japan tour, citing fears of radioactive contamination and sending the company scrambling to find last-minute stand-ins.

Soprano Anna Netrebko and tenor Joseph Calleja announced just days before the opening show that they would not join the tour of Nagoya and Tokyo despite experts' assurances they would be safe, forcing the Met to "scour the world" for replacements, general manager Peter Gelb said Tuesday.

"Part of what makes opera such an exciting art form is that it is so unpredictable," Gelb remarked. "If there were a rationality clause in opera singers' contracts, not many opera singers would perform."

Hurray for general managers who get a thrill out of problem solving!