Part of the genesis of my Yo-Yo Ma feature on Sunday was my curiosity about how artists deal with the responsibilities of assuming a political role.

It’s that time of year again, when practical jokers have a field day. Good-humored horseplay seems prevalent in cultures everywhere, even — according to Morning Edition commentator Miles Hoffman — within the hallowed halls of classical music.

I think it’s time to emphasize solutions on my blog. I’ve made so many criticisms of the classical music world — justified criticisms, I don’t hesitate to say. And I love the theoretical discussions we get into, which I’m often (but, wonderfully, not at all always) the one to start.

Life in Tokyo, as everywhere else in the world, is annoying and unfair. The good men are all married. Co-workers clip their fingernails at their desks. Laundry comes back from the cleaners still dirty. Society is too competitive. It is impossible to get enough sleep.

How many tweets does it take to cover the entire span of opera history? The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover — and at a rate of two tweets per day — the project could take years to finish.
 

It’s not the pyrotechnic pieces that are the most difficult, Cecilia Bartoli says. “The beautiful sad arias are the hardest to sing, because I am moved almost to tears. I know they were singing those arias out of their own sorrow.” Bartoli is talking about her new recording, Sacrificium, which concerns the most exquisitely unsettling episode in the history of music: the castrati and the music written for them.
 

Apart from the fighting fit, most of us struggle taking the stairs during the morning commute to work… especially if there is an escalator right next to them.