Anna Netrebko Cancels Met Japan Tour, Citing Radiation Fears (original) (raw)
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Met Stars Back Out of Tour to Japan
- May 31, 2011
The brightest star of the Metropolitan Opera’s tour to Japan, Anna Netrebko, has dropped out at the last minute over concerns about radiation, as did Joseph Calleja, a leading tenor, Met officials said in Tokyo on Tuesday. They joined Jonas Kaufmann, another tenor who pulled out over concerns after the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
The Met previously announced that Olga Borodina had also withdrawn from the trip to rest her voice and that the music director, James Levine, would not participate so he could recuperate from back problems.
The company — 350 musicians, choristers, dancers, stage crew members and principal singers — arrived on Monday ahead of performances in Nagoya and Tokyo, which begin on Saturday and run through June 19. The operas to be performed are “Don Carlo,” “La Bohème” and “Lucia di Lammermoor.”
Some company members had expressed concern about going to Japan because of potential risks, but the Met administration said experts and the State Department had declared conditions safe and required all with union contracts, like the choristers and orchestra players, to go on the tour.
“The majority of the company is very happy to be here,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in a telephone interview from Japan. “Stars are stars,” he said. “They’re different than company members. In the case of both Netrebko and Calleja, they were genuinely upset that they had to make these decisions.”
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The Russian soprano Anna Netrebko chose not to participate in the Metropolitan Opera's Japan tour "because of the emotional weight of having also lived through the tragedy of Chernobyl,” the Met said in a statement.Credit...Frank Leonhardt/European Pressphoto Agency
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