LA en vie

Diversity vs diversity

The other night I went to a choir concert at A's school. One of the ways I pass the time at things like this (I'm not that musical) is to scan the faces of the children and try to guess their ethnic background. This is a fun pastime in Los Angeles because the city is astonishingly diverse.

At my children's French schools, in spite of the occasional pale, Asian, North African or blond kid, there was still visibly a "typical French" face-- which over the years I came to define as sallow or olive skin, long faces with slim noses, and gray-blue or brown eyes. (By "typical French" I don't mean that most French people look like that, only that if you saw that face, you would think the person looked French.)

It made me feel patriotic to see all the different groups that made up the multi-ethnic mix in A's choir. There were scarcely two kids who looked as if they came from the same background.

But even though diversity is the path of the future for the United States, I have mixed feelings about it. That's because I think that it has its costs, as well as its benefits. If every country became multicultural like ours, diversity would be lost, not gained.

For example, I am sad that the Irish language , which my grandparents spoke and which has the oldest vernacular literature in Europe, is dying out. Every language is a universe. Think how different the vocabulary is in different languages. There have been studies showing that bilingual people behave and think differently, depending on which language they are using. That means something big is lost when a language disappears.

Small ethnic groups are the original source of diversity. I don't like to see any group be melted completely and disappear from the earth. And that means that somewhere, that group needs to have a core where people stay together and belong. Sometimes, when my Czech au pair or my Finnish friend spoke of their nation, which is pretty much one with their ethnic group and their language (and let's not forget that DNA analyses are showing that many small ethnic groups are basically very large families)-- I would feel envious of the sense of belonging that they must have. No American can know what that feels like. So I want some places to remain.... un-diverse.

Is that racist?

You know, I don't think it is.

No standing

Attending another performance in L.A., with its standard standing ovation afterwards (yawn), I was reminded of a different experience three weeks ago in Paris. I went to see James Conlon direct the French National Orchestra in a program of three rather short pieces, including (I believe) the European premiere of Erwin Schulhoff's Ogelala, as well as a Prokofiev concerto and Roussel's Bacchus et Ariane. The evening included a piano solo performance with the orchestra by a brilliant young pianist of 20, Lise de la Salle, glittering in a golden gown, with long blond hair, against the orchestra all in black.

The audience was wildly enthusiastic. There were repeated encores. No one stood up.

Give sorrow words

Yesterday a good, beloved relative died after a long illness. I told my children at various points during the day, and all two of them could think of to say when they first heard the news was a heartfelt, "That sucks."

Tristan und Isolde in Los Angeles

On Saturday night I went to see the Los Angeles opera production of Tristan und Isolde. It was the first time I'd ever seen a Wagner opera, and I was quite excited. Wagner is like a final exam of whether or not you love opera. I thought I did-- wasn't I very fond of the Flying Dutchman?

I'm still a new opera-goer. I didn't think to listen to the music first, find out about the singers, or use any of the usual techniques for getting more out of it. And if the opera company hadn't sent me an email, I would have missed the whole first act-- the opera had to start early to make up for its being four and a half hours long. It takes an hour and a half to get there, too, even though the opera is less than 20 miles away. Los Angeles traffic is inexorable.

I got to my seat in the nick of time and sat down to look at the program. The sets were by David Hockney. Oh no, I thought. The swimming-pool guy. Then the curtain went up. The sets were amazing-- here is the one for the first act. It was like a living fairy tale. I think they are the best sets I've ever seen, and the lighting was fantastic too.

But the first act was so very disappointing, it reminded me of when I was eight years old and my parents took me to see La Bohème-- and Mimi, the starving beauty, was played by a fat 40-year-old. Here, the fair maiden Isolde looked very much like my overweight blonde sister-in-law who is at least in her mid-40s. And Tristan, the handsome warrior, must have been sixty! All Isolde did was shriek in bad German all the way through the first act-- all she needed was the breastplate and spear to fulfill every cliché of screeching Wagner heroines.

"Feel like leaving after this act?" said D in my ear as we sat back down. All around me people were rustling. Lots of dressed-up men looking uncomfortable and gorgeous glamorous women.

But the second act was glorious. In the next intermission we had a glass of champagne and went out on the terrace. Below us was a sea of trees entwined with lights, and a lit-up fountain. "I love L.A.!" I said.

"Why?" said D. "You thought you would hate it."

I thought about it for a minute. "Well, there's the weather, of course," I said. "Then, everyone here is ambitious-- there's none of that Paris morosité. Even the poorest people haven't given up, they're not resigned, they all seem to be working hard for a better life.  I thought people out here would be shallow and provincial. But it's actually the least provincial city I know."

We went back in, and the last act was sublime. David Hockney, the brilliant lighting designer, and the director James Conlon came onstage at the end. As always, there was a standing ovation.