WNO Opens 60th Season

Washington National Opera opened its 60th Season on Saturday and what an eventful season it promises to be! In addition to the complete Wagner Ring, it includes a Philip Glass opera, a Kurt Weill work, Hansel and Gretel and three brand new 20-minute operas based on contemporary American stories. With so many works rarely performed in Washington coming up, it is hardly surprising that the season started with a warhorse such as Carmen.

Kennedy Center, Saturday evening, WNO season about to begin

I am happy Francesca Zambello came to Washington and took over WNO in January 2013. She had previously impressed me with her creation of the so-called American Ring, her rendition of the Wagner's tetralogy performed here between 2006 and 2009.  She reconfirmed that impression with her staging of Berlioz's Les Troyens at the Metropolitan in 2012. As WNO's artistic director, she is turning an opera house of mediocre Traviatas and Trovatores into an art organization blowing fresh air into a staid cultural atmosphere of the nation's capital. Francesca (and I feel close enough to use her first name) is my only hope that we may see a Berlioz opera in Washington one day.

Having seen several excellent performances of Carmen in the past few years, most recently a live broadcast from Orange, France, with Jonas Kaufmann and Kate Aldrich, I was prepared for a less than exciting evening. But once the lights went down and the curtain up (in this case a set splitting along a jagged line in the middle) magic happened. The more-or-less standard production directed by Loren Meeker had a few novelties to offer, such as a couple of enter-acte flamenco dancers. Since Clémentine Margaine's Carmen was not an especially skilled dancer, it would have been good to see a little more of Fanny Ara doing it for her.

Flamenco dancers Fanny Ara and Timo Nuñez 

Margaine has a beautiful voice, but her entrance was not impressive and it took a while for her to assert her presence. In the first act one could hardly distinguish her from other factory girls and her rendition of Habanera did nothing to make her stand out. Maybe a more strategic wardrobe and makeup would help. Her singing improved in the subsequent acts, but the wardrobe did not.

One problem most Carmens have is how to be seductive without being ridiculous. This one did nothing different than most others before her (Baltimore Opera's Milena Kitić from a decade ago comes to mind) and her trump card was spreading her legs around a guy. Directors should make a little more effort than have the "Gypsy" girl strut back and forth on the stage, wiggling her hips and hawking her wares like a vulgar street girl. That's not sexy. Furthermore, coming from the Balkans, I have seen more Gypsies than an average American opera patron, and none of their women walk like the operatic Carmen. Kate Aldrich changed the routine somewhat in the contemporary Orange production, but in my view, nobody has done a better job of seduction than Elina Garanča for the Met's Carmen a few years ago. She seemed to have a lot of fun with it and everything she did looked natural. A singer who is not good with gestures can be made more seductive with the right clothes and a suitable wig.

Bryan Hymel was an impressive Énée in Les Troyens recently and thus an artist to look forward to in WNO's Carmen. He was a sensitive and convincing Don José, though sharing more chemistry with Janai Brugger's excellent Micaëla than with Margaine's Carmen.

Bryan Hymel and Janai Brugger as Don José and Micaëla in WNO' Carmen

Michael Todd Simpson was a lackluster Escamillo. His entrance failed to electrify the stage as a celebrity toreador's is expected to do, although there was some improvement in the last act. Kenneth Kellog was well suited for the role of Lieutenant Zuniga and Nicholas Houhoulis did well as tavern owner Lillas Pastia. The sets were a slightly stylized take on the standard for the opera, with the faded image of la Nuestra Señora de Guadelupe hinting that the smuggling might be taking place on the U.S. border with Mexico rather than anywhere near Seville.

Overall, it was a solid performance that should please anyone who has not seen Bizet's masterpiece in a while. It was also an appropriate prelude to the new and rarely seen works such as Appomatox and others that will follow. The 2007 opera by Philip Glass will be WNO's first ever performance of a work by arguably the most celebrated contemporary American composer. The reworked version includes a completely new second act, featuring Washington native Soloman Howard as Martin Luther King Jr.

An important company premiere will be a South African production of Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars based on Alan Paton's novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Bass-baritone Eric Owens interprets Stephen Kumalo, a minister in apartheid-era South Africa who travels from his small village to Johannesburg to find his errant son.

The highlight of the WNO's 60th anniversary without doubt is Wagner's Ring. The cycle of the four operas attracts the world's attention whenever it is staged and people will travel distances to see the Met Ring, the Seattle Ring, the Melbourne Ring, and others, with the Bayreuth Ring remaining a lifelong dream for many an opera lover. WNO performed the four operas separately over four seasons about a decade ago, with the last one, Götterdämmerung given in concert form as the production money ran out. Oh, but what a glorious concert it was - with South African Gidon Kramer brooding his way into the role of Hagen to create the sexiest version of the evil dwarf's offspring ever seen on the stage. The then-WNO director Placido Domingo did a commendable job as Siegmund in the 2007 Walküre. All in all, it was a memorable Ring, the staggered performances whetting the appetite for every subsequent installment - and now making one eager to see how the next year's complete cycle will compare to the first run.

Croatia: Refugees Ante Portas

A Croatian friend from Las Vegas sends me an e-mail from our native Zagreb which she is visiting after several years of absence. She says she has shelved any plans for a possible retirement in the old country, and that even future visits are in question. Why? She finds the conversations too shallow, or "pouring from the hollow into the empty" as they say there and people too grim-faced, xenophobic and generally mean-spirited, living beyond their means, pretending to be what they are not, and thinking they know everything - even if they have not stepped out of their backyard for the past quarter-century.

Of course she is exaggerating, but I know what she means. Over several past decades, I have made at least five or six - probably more - trips to Croatia. The conversations invariably revolved around local issues: prices and availability of goods and services, alleged incompetence of political leaders and local who-are-whos. Despite the popularity of American movies and TV shows, the distaste for the United States is widespread (it's the country that wants total control of the world, where danger lurks around every corner; goods are cheap and poor quality; high culture is non-existant, and the food is good enough only for the boat people). Washington is not worth a visit for these "intellectuals" in the country of "cultural traditions" dating back to King Tomislav. Only "refined" cities such as Paris, Rome, London or Vienna will do. As my Las Vegas friend notes, without ever visiting the United States, many of these people believe they know all they need to about it, so the opportunity to learn first-hand from someone who actually lives there is passed up. During these many visits, I don't recall anyone asking me about my lifestyle, my career or my experience living in the United States. If I volunteer, the eyes glaze over and the subject is quickly changed.

Cafè in central Zagreb:  World News Not Discussed Here

Just recently, I attempted an e-mail discussion with an acquaintance in Zagreb about the averted train attack in Europe and the bravery of the Americans who subdued the heavily armed gunman. I thought surely that would be of interest to someone who lives on the continent and might travel on just such a train. The response was a total blank - the acquaintance had not heard about the incident. Neither had she heard of the Croatian worker who was kidnapped and beheaded by ISIS in Egypt. She does not read newspapers or watch TV news, she said. This from an intellectual with a published book behind her belt. Such news are of no use to her, she said. She feels sorry for the poor Croatian guy, she said, but the information I gave her only upsets her and has no other purpose. I was speechless. Of course she has the right to block out the unwanted information and, yes, the news are mostly depressing. But can an intellectual, even a fiction writer as opposed to a journalist, live in a vacuum - in a personal bubble protected from the infections of the outside world? I guess so.

Today's news (September 17) is dismal for Croatia. Thousands of migrants poured in through the border with Serbia as they head for Western Europe. Unprepared for the crowds the size of a small Croatian town, the border authorities were overwhelmed and what they hoped would be an orderly passage turned into chaos. Even those willing to help the exhausted, desperate and angry people were taken aback. An estimated 14,000 migrants entered the country in just two days after being diverted from the Serbian border with Hungary, which is now sealed.

Refugees are not new to Croatia. The country hosted tens of thousands of people displaced by the 1990's ethnic conflict in the Balkans. But those refugees trickled in gradually, they were neighbors and they spoke a language that could be understood. After the war, many returned to their homes and those who stayed were easily integrated.

Chaos on the Croatian Border with Serbia

The current waves comprise people from the Middle East and other far-away foreign regions.  They don't plan to stay, but as a European Union member, Croatia will have to settle a certain number of the refugees that have reached Europe in the past few years. Many locals cringe at the idea of integrating people of such different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. During my school years in Zagreb, the handful of Middle-easterners and Africans in Zagreb were young people from the so-called non-aligned countries, befriended by longtime Yugoslav leader Tito, and they came temporarily to study at the Zagreb University.  Only one of those students, a Kenyan,  became a permanent resident.  But EU executives earlier this month said each member nation should accept 160,000 migrants. Even one third of that figure would create a huge impact on the Slavic country with very few and not very diverse minorities.  Maybe that's a jolt that Croatia and other eastern European countries need to realize that they are part of an increasingly global world, despite barbed-wire fences they may put up.

The barbarity of the Balkans conflict stunned the world in the early 1990's. By the time the world recovered from its stupor, thousands of people were massacred, tortured and displaced. The world is now equally stunned by (and therefore unprepared to accommodate or process) the number of people risking life and limb to escape the new places of conflict, popping up in the developing world. Why the surprise? Perhaps because too many intellectuals block out distressing information and choose to live protected in comfortable bubbles?

The Importance of Privacy

When I moved to the United States, one of the first cultural concepts I learned was the importance of privacy.  I found the word hard to translate for friends and relatives back in Europe, usually having to resort to something like privatnost or intima, which did not feel like exactly the same thing. I basically thought there was no word for privacy in Croatian because there is no privacy there. Wrong!

The way I saw it: in a small town of a small country everyone can find out all they want about another person because there is always someone who has the information you seek. For example, if a new guy asks you on a date, all you need do is make a couple of inquiries and you'll have his complete dating history and first-hand accounts of his character - whether he is  a cad or a decent fellow. In the States, you would have to pay an agency to provide that kind of information, and still not be sure that you are not getting entangled with a monster.  In a big city, neighbors don't even know one another. That's privacy, I thought.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I realize I had it all wrong. As a government employee I have had to fill hundreds of official forms with questions probing so far back into my past that I could not answer them even when I was only in my 20s. For example: What did you eat for breakfast on March 12, 19-hundred-something? What was your great-grandmother's favorite color? Who was your maternal uncle's first girlfriend? All this before September 11. I'd hate to see job applications people have to fill out today.

OK, these are official matters and one can assume that the name of my elementary school teacher may hint at some important flaw in my upbringing.  So the employer, especially the U.S. government, needs to know. But once you get home and you close the door to the outside world, you are in your sacred private domain. My home is my castle, right?  Sure.  

ConsumersUnion.org

One thing I have learned is that my telephone line - serviced by increasingly expensive Verizon - is not in my private domain. Almost 100% of the calls I receive on my landline are generated by telemarketers, campaigners, pollsters, fund-raisers and scammers. With the advent of cell phones, e-mail and social media, my friends and others I deal with very rarely call my home number, except to leave an occasional message - an appointment reminder and such.

Annoyance calls made by a human being are relatively easy to answer: "I am not interested, please don't call again."  But increasingly, the calls are made by robots and if you answer, the robot frequently says: "All our agents are busy."  If you put the phone down,  the robot will call again, and again.  You can't win in this game.

In the past few weeks, I've been plagued by a robot with an "urgent" message for Jared Hoke.  The robot has been calling at different hours and is now waking me up at an earlier hour every morning in the hope of catching me.  I am not able to explain that I am not hiding Jared in my closet because I can't talk to anyone or even leave a message.  So I called Verizon's harassment hotline for help.  A Verizon robot answered to explain that telemarketing robots make more calls than they can answer, so they put you on hold, and if you end the call before speaking to someone, they'll call again.  The Verizon robot also said these calls are perfectly legal and that I can place my name and number on a do-not-call list, but without a guarantee that the calls will stop.

ConsumersUnion.org says:

Robocallers invade our homes and privacy. They circumvent the Do Not Call list. And they cost us real money – an estimated $350 million a year is lost to phone scams.

Yes, in addition to legit calls, there are criminal ones.  I have been receiving calls announcing in a tough tone that the IRS has filed a suit against me.  Even though I have my tax papers filed by an accounting company to make sure I never get in trouble with the IRS, I was fooled for a moment. I had to make a few phone calls to make sure I was in clear. But some people get fleeced.

According to FTC,  there has been a significant increase in the number of illegal robocalls because "internet-powered phone systems have made it cheap and easy for scammers to make illegal calls from anywhere in the world, and to hide from law enforcement by displaying fake caller ID information."

Some scammers remain a little more personal.  I still get calls from a real man from India or Pakistan, claiming that he is calling from my PC company because my computer is sending signals that it needs fixing. And fixing involves allowing him to access my computer and all the data in it. I told him never to call back, but he still checks on me at least once a month.

Verizon's suggestions?  I can change my number to an unpublished one, or discontinue my landline service altogether. I have been reluctant to take an unpublished number because I always picture a friend from my European past passing through Washington and trying to find me.  It has happened.  So if I don't have a listed number, I risk missing an old friend.  I know, I know - a friend does not come unannounced - but it is not quite like that where I come from.

Ultimately, I may have to do what many Americans have already done. Peggy from Park City, Utah, wrote this on ConsumerUnion.org:

"Before we gave up our landline, we used to get several (harassment calls) a day. Since giving up our landline, the calls have stopped, but I have received an “Award Notification” claiming they had been unable to reach us to deliver a voucher for more than $1200 in airline tickets. I recognized this as phony. As a 70-plus woman living in the mountains, it would have been nice to have kept the landline for emergencies, but I couldn’t get them to stop calling. I really wish someone could make them stop."

My mailbox

Mailboxes in the United States are not private either. I find tons of junk in mine every day and on several occasions I have discarded important mail together with sales brochures and discount coupons. As a kid I used to wait impatiently for the postman to see if he is bringing me a letter or a postcard.  Now I see my mailbox as an additional trash container to be cleaned out daily. The Beatles' Please, Mr Postman is not my favorite song. 

I asked the mailman not to put ads and commercials in my box, but he told me he was obliged by law to deliver every single piece of junk with my address on it. So there we are. My home must remain open to the invasion of everyone trying to make a buck.  My privacy is non-existent either in the personal or in the public domain. Companies know what I last bought and what I may be thinking of buying next. Everyone can find out anything they want about me online.    

This kind of plague has not reached Europe yet, at least not to such an extent.  Friends in Croatia tell me that once they close their doors, their homes remain impenetrable. No one would dare call during dinner time, or during siesta time. Telemarketing would cause a revolution; and robo-calls are unheard of - as yet.

Privacy?  Maybe the Croatian language does not have a word for it, but who needs it when you have the real thing.  

Terrible Summer Movies

I love summer. I really do, despite the heat, the humidity and the freezing office temperatures from mid-June till mid-September. So when that first autumn day actually brings a modicum of relief, I feel inexplicably sad.  Not for long,  but the melancholy never fails to sneak in on that first day when I need to wear something over the T-shirt. I am never sad when spring is over or when winter is over, not even when the beautiful Washington fall is over.  Only when summer is over.

Perhaps my end-of-summer gloom harkens back to my school age when summer always meant fun and freedom, while the onset of fall ushered in a long period of duties and structured routine.  Adding to the blues, I am sure, was the eastern European poetry, in which autumn always signified aging and death.

Take for example the poem, Autumn Evening, by Antun Gustav Matoš:

JESENJE VEČE 
Olovne i teške snove snivaju
Oblaci nad tamnim gorskim stranama;
Monotone sjene rijekom plivaju,
Žutom rijekom među golim granama.
Iza mokrih njiva magle skrivaju
Kućice i toranj; sunce u ranama
Mre i motri kako mrke bivaju
Vrbe, crneći se crnim vranama.
Sve je mračno, hladno; u prvom sutonu
Tek se slute ceste, dok ne utonu
U daljine slijepe ljudskih nemira.
Samo gordi jablan lisjem suhijem
Šapće o životu mrakom gluhijem,
Kao da je samac usred svemira.

It goes something like this: "The clouds hovering over dark mountain sides are dreaming heavy, lead-colored dreams.  Monotonous shadows are swimming in the yellow river,  (presumably from the fallen leaves) that is meandering among naked branches...  "and so on and so forth.  There is sun "dying from wounds", there are willow trees "black from crows" that sit on them, and there is a poplar tree "whispering like a loner in the universe."  How much more depressing can it get?

But autumn in Washington is the best season of the year.  It's sunny and warm.  The colors are gorgeous.  The tourist crowds thin down.  All your friends are back from vacation. It's a pleasure to be out and about. And cultural events return to town.  So much to look forward to! 

Summer, on the other hand is a pain. I avoid traveling during my once favorite season because of the long lines everywhere, and I don't spend much time outdoors because of the unbearable temperatures. So my entertainment is confined to air-conditioned venues such as restaurants, movie theaters and private homes. I don't have Netflix and never watch TV. But I love seeing a movie on a big screen with nothing to distract me except the crackling of snack bags and pop-corn crunching by movie goers around me.

Unfortunately, the movie industry has figured out (why, of why?) that summer is the best season to unload all of the dreadfully dumb movies. There is nothing to see but over-the-top action, horror, sci-fi and kiddy stuff, something no one would want to see if their brains were not cooked in the scorching sun.

One shining exception this summer is Landmark Bethesda's La Sapienza, a wonderful philosophy about architecture and the meaning of life. I referred to it in more detail in my previous blog so I will only add that along with The Great Beauty  (La Grande Bellezza), it is the best movie I've seen in the past decade.  I measure a film's value by how long I remember it.  I suspect the programmers had no idea of the movie's depths and scheduled it along with the summer trash by mistake.

Thanks to a couple of area's "art" theaters, there is also an interesting offering from Israel, A Borrowed Identity, which focuses on the irrationality of ethnic conflict and the ability of courageous individuals to overcome it.  A Jewish woman harbors an Arab boy pretending he is her son.  Although not exceptionally good, the movie is like a drop of water in the desert of summer mediocrities.

Cartel Land - a documentary I went to see reluctantly because no matter how much I am interested in the topic, I avoid stuff that I cover at work during my time off - turned out to be a deadly bore.  The camera follows a group of Mexican vigilantes from village to village as they try to gain support for their fight against drug cartels, and then switches to a counterpart group on the US side of the border - all without much drama and true horror, inevitably linked to the cartel crime. 

Then this weekend some new movies came out and I thought I could not go wrong with Maryl Streep.  Well, I could and I did! Ricki and the Flash turned out to be Ricki and the Trash.  It was painful to watch this talented and beautiful woman decked in leather and chains, with a skewed hair style - one side swept forward, revealing a bald patch, another side braided in several strands - and generally looking pathetic and uncomfortable, a far cry from anything she has done so far in that genre, certainly less entertaining than Mamma Mia!  God, I hope we don't all look as pathetic as Ricki when we get older.

Kevin Kline, Streep's one time wonderful partner in Sophie's Choice, didn't make any effort to improve the movie. 

Before the disaster of Ricki, a friend persuaded me to see Amy Schumer's Trainwreck.  He said she was a new talent, writing her own comedy - worth a try.  I went prepared for the worst because I think only the Brits can make a good comedy.  And it was the worst: full of sophomoric toilet humor  (two women talking while they sit in public toilet booths for extended period of time, we see their feet, and in one case underwear, but we don't hear the sound of urination, so it must be - wait, wait don't tell me .... All I could think was: "How bad does it smell?") sex with a guy I would not feel comfortable sitting next to in the metro, and an exceedingly charming young doctor  (Bill Hader) who is not pursued by hordes of women (what planet are we on????).

Granted, there are a few genuinely hilarious moments, most of them supplied by Tilda Swinton - a Brit (of course).  The only advantage in seeing the movie for me was the introduction to Amy Schumer.  I had never heard of her before and she appears to be a new celebrity, especially after a gunmen killed two women in Luisiana during a screening of Trainwreck.

The movie made me realize how sorely lacking I am on the subject of celebrities.  I had been so proud of finally being able to recognize Kim Kardashian on magazine covers in food stores, even though I am still not clear on what she does.

So, today, when an ad popped up on my computer with the headline saying something like Celebrities You Did Not Know Were Married to Each Other, I clicked to test myself.  The list included 20 couples, i.e. 40 people.  Of the 40 I could only only identify 3:  Michele Pfeifer, Harrison Ford and Claire Danes.  The others drew a complete blank and I wondered how such plain looking people could be celebrities.  

Why am I so behind?  I am sure it has something to do with those terrible summer movies I have been avoiding like plague.  Like, who are Vincent Kartheiser and Alexis Bledel?  Or Felicity Huffman and Wiliam H. Macy?  Jennifer Grey and Clark Gregg?   Christina Hendricks and Geoffrey Arend?  They must have become celebrities while I was sleeping. Imagine running into them at a shopping mall and failing to stare!

I have to restrain my negativity and rush to see more summer flicks while they last.  In less than a month we'll have serious stuff coming in.  Not only better movies, but the opera season will kick in, and the theater stages promise things like Sophocles's Antigone, featuring no less than Juliette Binoche, who at least at one point in her life was a celebrity.  With competition of that sort, there'll be no time for  Ant-Man,  Shaun the Sheep or Fantastic 4.

So much to look forward to in the fall! I have to remember that when the customary melancholy tries to set in with that first breezy day, smelling of autumn.

Wolf Trap's Ghosts of Versailles

One of the highlights of my summers in Washington D.C. is an annual pilgrimage to Wolf Trap for a picnic and a performance with a group of friends.  In the early years, we used to go to the Filene Center, get cheap lawn tickets and just picnic while watching the show. After several rainy experiences, we switched to in-house seats. And finally we moved from the large crowds in the Filene's to a more intimate atmosphere of the Barns at Wolf Trap.  Over the years we have come to appreciate the Wolf Trap Opera company for its innovative productions and impressive new voices and so the annual event became an opera event.  For me the company's strength is its repertoire of rarely performed works, such as Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias, Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream and now Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles.

I've been wanting to see The Ghosts of Versailles since it premiered in New York in 1991 and feared I would never have a chance to see it in the conservative Washington.  When I learned last year that  the Los Angeles Opera was staging it, and no less than under the direction of my compatriot Darko Trešnjak (of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder fame), I carefully studied my budget to see if I can afford a trip to LA with hotel accommodation and a ticket for the performance.

Luckily and not surprisingly, the Wolf Trap Opera came to the rescue.  And so our little group returned enthusiastically to the Barns this Sunday, to indulge in a picnic under a huge pine tree and the never-before-seen opera. After the repas, sufficiently mellowed by sangria, cold salads, Greek spinach pie, blue cheese, fruit salad and key lime pie, we were ready to take on any operatic challenge.

Wolf Trap Opera's The Ghosts of Versailles, with Beaumarchais characters on stage

Corigliano's opera is inspired by Beaumarchais's play  La mère coupable (The Guilty Mother?), but from there, the composer and his librettist William Hoffman fly off in their own multiple directions. In their story, the famed author of three Figaro plays entertains Marie-Antoinette and her jaded retinue somewhere in the other world 200 years after their deaths. Still unable to recover from the shock of her beheading, the tragic queen bemoans her destiny and claims innocence. Beaumarchais is in love with her and promises to re-write history to save her from death. In his new play, she will be abscond to England, returned to France in triumph and the history will end as it should. Through this play (an opera-within the opera) Marie-Antoinette learns about the misery of the French poor under her husband Louis XVI's rule and she comes to terms with her real-life destiny. 

To be sure, Corigliano's opera was not what I expected.  It did start with an overture that brings to mind Bela Lugosi's Dracula.  It was eerie and beautiful, and not entirely surprising. The opening scene with ghosts sitting in a theater where an orchestra enveloped in a ghostly mist played its ghostly accords also was something to be expected.  But from then on things went from silly to crazy and worse, with a melange of music styles ranging from arias and duets reminiscent of Mozart's da Ponte operas to gypsy music, and to the American musical, at which point one of the ghosts adorned with a Valkyra shield and helmet stepped in to complain: "This is not opera. Wagner is opera." 

When Turkish entertainer Samira burst onto the scene with her seductive belly dance, pulling a magician-style, never-ending scarf from her bodice, my Serbian friend leaned to me and whispered "Bosno moja!",  referring to the whining oriental melodies that were once popular in parts of former Yugoslavia.

The second act continued with offerings hinting at every possible music genre, including a scene with Marie-Antoinette in jail, looking suspiciously like Marguerite in Gounod's Faust.

The operatic journey liberates Marie-Antoinette from her death shock and as she accepts her fate, she tells Baumarchais not to change the ending because it is exactly as it should be.  The captured bird she used to sing about spreads its wings, as we learn from a huge shadow rising behind the illuminated curtain. Even though its sparse feathers make it look more like a scraggly monster than a golden bird. Marie-Antoinette walks into the sunset with her lover Beaumarchais. 

Costumes for The Ghosts of Versailles by David Woolard

I am happy to have finally seen The Ghosts of Versailles and especially that I first saw it at the Barns and not at the Met or even at the LA Opera.  Seeing it 24 years ago would likely have been a huge disappointment.  I might have expected something sophisticated like Corigliano's Clarinet Concerto, or deeply melancholic and soulful like "The  Red Violin" Concerto. But seeing this mostly fluffy concoction after a pleasant al fresco feast, in a rustic little hall at Wolf Trap was sheer pleasure.  Our little group agreed that Melinda Whittington excelled as Marie-Antoinette as did Robert Watson as the villain.  The rest of the cast was abundant with fresh and sparkling voices as most Wolf Trap operas are.  The only disappointment, although a minor one, was Morgan Pearse's Figaro.  He was merely one of the players, instead of ruling the roost, or rather the stage, with wits and antics masking a profound wisdom that gets Figaro out of every scrape. 

The Ghosts of Versailles, at times more a sit-com than an opera, turned out to be a great choice for a summer show at the Barns, one that whetted our appetite for the next season. I am sure the company won't disappoint.

While looking into Corigliano, I happened to learn that he is married to Mark Adamo, the composer of a very successful small-scale opera Little Women.  I met Adamo for an interview regarding the Washington premiere of his work whose title I can't recall.  I do not remember the year either  (perhaps 2000?), but I remember the young man in an elegant camel hair coat and black roll neck sweater, talking most seriously about his work, clearly excited that it would be presented to audiences worldwide in a VOA radio program.   

The information that Adamo and Corigliano are married makes me wonder how much two artists living together influence each other.  I could not detect any signs of Adamo in Corigliano's opus or vice-versa.  I also wonder what Adamo is doing these days.  Perhaps the Wolf Trap Opera will show us next summer.

A Letter From Costa Rica

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail addressed to a Rick, forwarded by my friend Dan Rupli. The e-mail seemed to be sent from Costa Rica, a country which impressed me with its beauty and tranquility during last year's visit. Since I do not know this Rick, but I do know that Dan was buying property in Costa Rica, I was not sure if it was spam or not and so I checked with Dan in a separate mail. He confirmed being the sender and agreed that I can post his letter on my blog.  The content was not what I expected and it may surprise you too.

From:  Dan Rupli

 Tuesday,  June 16, 2015

Subject:  To my new friend Rick, with gratitude and admiration

I am watching the magical cloud formations at 5,000 feet altitude at the entrance to Mt. Chirripo Nabetional Park in South Central Costa Rica. Chirripo reaches a height of 12,000 feet, which is Colorado Rocky class and is the tallest mountain in Costa Rica.

I am staying with my wife and a close friend in a small jungle house that I am about to purchase, which is bordered by two wild cascading rivers which join at the property after tumbling out of Chirripo and rushing South toward magnificent Pacific beaches about 45 minutes South of here.

Sitting here on the patio after a wonderful breakfast with good Costa Rican coffee listening to the river sounds all around makes me feel like I am in a kind of Eden with birds, butterflies, flowers, and hummingbirds dancing all around me. I have had the good fortune to travel extensively around the world, but this small magical place in the cloud forests of the Talamanca Mountains, populated by “the happiest people on earth” is the most wonderful place I have ever been.

Costa Rica could forest

You would be right to conclude that this ought to be the source of almost unlimited joy at the moment, but I am of this world, with a blessed life experience, and I must vent some deeply felt feelings that were unleashed by a chance encounter with a Vietnam veteran that I have befriended since my arrival. Please indulge me.

Like many of my generation, my life was shaped by giant and consequential events; the Civil Rights Movement, the advent of Rock and Roll music, the multiple assassinations of great leaders who chartered my own course and beliefs, and the war in Vietnam.

Two days ago I met a man of my age named Rick who spent his early years in Utah, before enlisting as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Rick is a gentle soul and a chain smoker who, like me has been married more than once, and who recently met and married a newly widowed Tica lady who is appropriately known as Gabby. They are in the process of putting together a tourist business here locally. Over lunch, Rick and I talked about politics, particularly the unfolding mess in the Middle East. We both drew parallels with the current experience to the horrors of our involvement in Vietnam.

It is not my purpose to discuss the President’s Middle East foreign policy. I happen to believe that he and John Kerry are right to focus on obtaining a workable nuclear weapons ban treaty with Iran, and if that doesn’t meet the approval of the thug who is running Israel at the moment, or the ultra cruel and corrupt Saudi Royal Family, then I think that Obama may have it just about right.

But this morning I focus my rage on the Chicken Hawks who engineered through lies, deception, and cooked intelligence our very presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. These right wing cowards, creeps and criminals have names: Bush(W), Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others. The common thread that binds each of these “armchair patriots” to one another like perps chained together after a drug raid is that all of them favored and promoted the war in Vietnam, and all of them did everything they could to duck service in that war. George W. Bush actually deserted his National Guard unit for over a year to get out of serving after the considerable cost to tax payers for his training as a pilot. Of course he was never prosecuted for desertion because of his father’s extensive connections. Dick Cheney received no less than seven deferments while hiding under his bed from service in the war, like Bush and the others.

Costa Rica, Arenal area

I have experienced a certain guilt in not having served in Vietnam like many of my friends, but early on I supported the idea of trying to “defend the South Vietnamese people from their marauding Communist neighbors from the North.” I even tried without success to join the Marines in order to avenge the death of a close high school buddy of mine who was an early casualty of that bogus War, But I was prevented from enlisting because I was married with a child.

Today those same draft dodging Chicken Hawks who let less fortunate people fight and die in a war that the cowards supported and never served in are harping about the Administration’s “weakness and lack of resolve” in a tangled Middle Eastern morass that is entirely of their own creation. To date those Middle Eastern wars have lasted beyond a decade, cost the lives of thousands of Americans - the flower of a generation, cost trillions of dollars in national treasure, and resulted in the death and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of native innocents, and they show no sign of winding down. And still the Chicken Hawks continue to put complete hypocrisy on display without a tiny shred of shame attached to it.

This narrative seeks to tie the same culprits with their “lapel pin patriotism” to both the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, but most importantly it is a tribute to my new friend Rick whose suffering and sacrifice for a questionable cause goes way beyond ordinary military service.

Rick was landing his helicopter in a “hot zone in the jungle” to pick up wounded soldiers on a hot and sunny day during the height of the Vietnam War. When he landed he said that the jungle was so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. After loading the wounded, he lifted the chopper with its precious cargo up to the bright sunshine above the treetops. At that moment he said that his entire life went into a kind of slow motion as he saw the flash of a rocket tearing toward him from the jungle floor. He banked the helicopter violently to the right. The rocket missed the main body of the helicopter but severed the main rotor from the rest of the vehicle. The copter didn’t have far to fall back into the darkness of the jungle, and Rick’s only thought was to not die in a fire, so he leapt into the treetops and fell to the ground as the helicopter exploded nearby into a fireball of human anguish. Rick was severely injured by the fall, but instinctively rose to his feet “running like hell” in total darkness and in no particular direction until he ran into a tree breaking out all of his front teeth. At the same time he heard the sound of an automatic weapon and felt three bullets enter his body - one under his left eye, the second under his left armpit exiting his neck, and the third hitting him square in the sternum. He remembers hearing a loud buzzing sound in his head before passing out. When he awoke he was being dragged by a GI through the jungle who had mercifully administered large amounts of morphine to this fallen soldier. Rick was medivacked shortly afterwards, not fully knowing whether he wanted to survive the events that laid him so low.

It took Rick over a year of intensive care to partially recover from his hideous wounds, which continue to cause him great physical and emotional pain to this day.

Costa Rica, Samara beach

My reaction to Rick's story on all that has transpired in those last couple of days in Vietnam: if there is a Creator, may God bless you Rick, not just for your service but for your suffering and sacrifice for someone else’s hollow patriotism and terrible errors in judgment. And may God damn you George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and all the other creeps and scoundrels who visited havoc and suffering on so many people of different generations by supporting, lying us into, and promoting endless wars for profit in the name of National honor and patriotism. You are all war criminals and worse, each of you have earned a place in the history of infamy.

I met Rick again today for coffee and very little was spoken between us. Our first conversation had taken a lot out of both of us, and I don’t think that either of us had the energy to continue it.

We sat there and marveled at the rapidly changing cloud patterns, the incredible sunbursts that punctuated a gentle rain and the beauty that totally surrounded us in this precious little piece of mountain paradise. Here we were, two aging men of different backgrounds and experience, one a casualty of war, seeking only to find peace, order, justice, and happiness in a world that continues, after all these years, to be turned totally upside down by the folly of false patriots.

Kirill Petrenko Takes Over Berlin Philharmonic

Last week the world's most renowned orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, announced that Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko would succeed Sir Simon Rattle as music director in August of 2018. The news did not take America by storm.  Few people ever even heard of him.  I have been confusing him with Vasily Petrenko.  So when I received an excited e-mail from a Russian friend who otherwise never e-mails, saying "Wow! This is quite incredible; after Furtwangler, Karajan, Abbado, and Rattle, now this orchestra will be led by a man of the Russian-Jewish (and Soviet) upbringing - a rare moment these days when one can be proud to be Russian,"  I had to Google Petrenko to establish which one he was talking about.

There is actually no reason why Kirill Petrenko should be little known in the United States. When he performed here with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2009 and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012, he received generally glowing reviews. He conducted Mussorgsky’s “Khovanschina” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2012 also with great acclaim.

According to Zachary Woolfe of the New York Times: "Perhaps the most impressive performance was Mr. Petrenko’s. The orchestra rose to powerful climaxes, but in quieter, conversational moments he held the sound carefully below the singers. His pacing was controlled but flexible, ebbing, flowing and inexorably building under Shaklovity’s dark monologue bemoaning the state of Russia."

Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2012

But Petrenko's performances in the U.S. have not been announced with great pomp as those of his compatriot Valery Gergiev, who enjoys a celebrity status here.  Petrenko seems to be far more appreciated in Europe where he is best known as an opera conductor.  In the past couple of years he has enjoyed success as the music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.  His take  on Wagner’s “Ring” at the Bayreuth Festival in 2013 also was admired.

Gergiev has conducted some of the best orchestras in the world and there is no doubt that if he wanted to leave Russia for a prestigious position anywhere in the world, he could, said Washington-based Russia analyst Peter Eltsov. "Yet Gergiev has lent his art and his name to raising the profile of his political patron, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, " Eltsov said in an article on Gergiev in The Atlantic magazine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/russias-hero-of-labor-comes-to-washington/277735/

Petrenko on the other hand has remained silent regarding his stance on Putin’s policies. As far as I am concerned, he can stay that way. When I listen to music I don't want to have to worry whether the performer has been politically correct or not. Gergiev is one of my most favorite contemporary conductors and he became one before I knew anything about his political sympathies. I enjoyed every performance he conducted here in Washington and in terms of recordings, I think he energizes anything he conducts, regardless of how many flaws some critics find.  

I also consider Furtwangler's "Ring" the best on record and enjoy most of what Karajan conducted.  Both have been suspected or openly accused of Nazi sympathies.  Should I shun them?  Perhaps.  But some of my best friends also have what many would consider unacceptable political opinions.   I still love them just don't discuss politics with them.  I like to think that art, friendship and love are eternal and celestial. Politics is earthly and passing.

Still it will be easier to listen to Petrenko without having to worry about what he thinks of Putin.

He will be the first Russian-born conductor, as well as the first Jewish one, to take the job in the orchestra’s 133-year history.  It would appear that he beat German Christian Thielemann and Latvian Andris Nelsons, for the lofty position in Berlin.

“Words cannot express my feelings, everything from euphoria and great joy to awe and disbelief,” Petrenko said. “I am aware of the responsibility and high expectations, and I will do everything in my power to be a worthy conductor of this outstanding orchestra.”

"He has led the Berlin Philharmonic only three times before, choosing the eclectic repertoire including music by Bartok, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky and Scriabin. He can be expected to move the orchestra away from the Germanic masterpieces at the core of its repertoire," The New York Times said. I will be looking forward to following that development.

To clarify any confusion with Kirill's namesake: Vasily Petrenko is Chief Conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic.

He has recently caused a hoopla by telling the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that orchestras “react better” when the conductor is a man. “When women get a family, it becomes difficult to be as dedicated as the job demands,” he added, joining the army of politically incorrect artists.

Education Against Extremism

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said that the military campaign to stop the Islamic State group has killed more than 10,000 of its fighters in less than a year. The announcement came at the same time as the news that IS had made advances in Iraq and Syria. A general conclusion is that the group is not deterred by fear of death, but no one is quite sure what drives these people to commit mayhem in order to create a world they want to live in. Hence the difficulty in finding out the right antidote.

Last month, the Oxford University announced that Louise Richardson had been nominated to become the next director and vice chancellor of the university, starting in January 2016. She would be the first woman vice chancellor of the university since the post was created in 1230. The Irish born professor is a specialist in counter-terrorism. According to her, terror groups are characterized by a "highly oversimplified view of the world" and the most effective "antidote" to violent extremism is education.

Speaking at a recent British Council conference in London, Professor Richardson said that "radical ideas belong in a university" and should be debated and challenged. She argued that education challenges the "black and white" views of extremists, undermining "simplification and certitude." Bill Rammell, vice chancellor of Bedfordshire University and former universities minister, who also spoke on the panel, warned that it would be "counter productive" to block open campus debate about radical ideas, because that would "feed the narrative of victimhood."

Certainly, such intellectual debates could help prevent radicalization of university students, especially those who are interested in developing their minds toward creating a better world. But for those already in IS ranks it's far too late.

One of the earliest proverbs I learned growing up in Croatia was (loosely translated) "from the cradle to the grave, the best is the learning age." It could mean that the nicest part of life is when you are a student, or that you should spend your life time studying.

In many European countries Philosophy is an obligatory high school subject, and inevitably a core subject at any humanity college. I majored in Linguistics at the School for Philosophy of the Zagreb University - clearly a Philosophy course was obligatory.  Discussions we practiced in these courses were later applied in the courses of Literature, Sociology, Political Sciences and others. Philosophy taught us how to think, analyze and explain the complexities of life around us.  It was one of my favorite subjects.

But most people have a limit beyond which they don't want to study. It often happens when a person graduates and begins to work. Building a career, making money, creating a family and other preoccupations take precedence over in-depth studies, discussions and debate. The conversations begin to center on things like mortgages, interest rates, electronic gadgets, quality of beer and house pets.  That would be an acceptable learning experience - it was for me - if another one followed. But that is usually where it stops. True, there are political and other discussions here and there, but their depth often depends on where you live and work.

Even if we do engage in lofty discussions, most of us become "set in our ways" as we grow older  and we have less tolerance for those whose values differ from ours.  Often, we have no patience to hear out the other side.  When I visit my "intellectual" friends in Zagreb, the discussions center around the best local dentists, the "in" fashion brands, family issues and gossip. The political discussion is reduced to general statements like "our political leaders are incapable" or "corrupt," or both, and "the country is on the edge of the abyss."  Even though the statements are true, one rarely gets an elaboration on the topic, and almost never a suggestion as to what should be done to change that. My French teacher says it's the same in France, so it's not just a local phenomenon.  It may be a little different in Washington's "elevated" circles, but don't count on a philosophical discussion in every bar in the city.

What a surprise and pleasure therefore it was the French movie La sapienza I happened to see this weekend.  Seemingly about Italian baroque architecture, it is a meditation on life and a reminder not to allow one's intellect to sink into the darkness of mediocrity, but constantly strive for light.  In La sapienza, film director Eugène Green offers an allegorical tale of a successful Swiss-born architect Alexandre Schmidt who professes adherence to French secularism, but has clearly lost passion for his own ideas. He decides to travel from France to Italy to resume research for a book on the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. 

Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, Rome

On the shores of Lake Maggiore, he and his wife Aliénor encounter an Italian brother and sister in their late teens. The boy Goffredo wants to be an architect and so he accompanies Schmidt on a two-week trip looking at Borromini's buildings. 

Unlike Schmidt, Goffredo believes in spirituality. A model town he has constructed is centered around a temple for all religions. When asked what about people who have no religion, he says even they can feel the "presence" in the temple. And how does the architect achieve this ? “Through light,” he says.

Schmidt told Goffredo of the fierce rivalry between Borromini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The former's work is mystical and the latter's highly rational. “I am Bernini,” says Schmidt who is obviously attracted to Borromini’s mysticism. Telling the story of the two architects to the younger man, rekindles his own passion that has been smothered by disappointments in his adult life and the contemporary materialism of his world.

The purpose of architecture is to create spaces where people can find light and love, concludes Schmidt at the end of the trip as he embraces his wife for what seems like the fist time after many years.

As I write this, it occurs to me that tomorrow is another day at work, another day in the box
with no light or love, a place where no radical thought will ever come up for discussion, and a place where passion for one's own ideas is systematically smothered.

In La sapienza, the renowned architect explains to the young Italian that a Turin chapel housing the famous shroud was attacked by an arsonist because "people want to destroy what they fear." Islamic State destroys ancient monuments. One may wonder what they fear since obviously it is not death.  Could it be their own mediocrity - the inability to create something that can be admired and serve as inspiration for generations to come?  It is preferable to be feared than to be ignored.

If, as Professor Richardson said, terror groups are characterized by a "highly oversimplified view of the world," the question one might ask is why they don't keep it to themselves and let others keep theirs.  Why is any individual thought or trait within a group strictly forbidden? Why does Boco Haram discourage education?  Even thought the translation of the name would suggest that only Western education is banned, to my knowledge Boko Haram does not allow any teaching except selected parts of Quran.  So my guess is people in these groups use violence to prevent others to think and learn.  Anything beyond blind obedience could lead to questioning the "wisdom" of the leadership and prove it wanting. 

It would be wrong to assume that members of radical groups lack intelligence.  If Islamic State was made up of stupid people it would not have recruited so many people and made such impressive territorial advances.  But the group's vision of the world has no future because it lacks an essential component: the understanding of an individual's need to seek enlightenment.

The West is not free of people with oversimplified views of the world either, in fact they dominate in many areas.  They may not take up weapons and shoot like Islamic State, but they fight in other ways to subdue those who don't agree with them.  At work, it's the lowest-level supervisors who impose rules made up by the higher management, and penalize any challenge to their authority.  In the U.S. health care system, it's the doctors who refuse to see a patient as an individual, but run everyone through the same set of rushed procedures.  In the financial world, it's the bankers keeping clients hostage through loans.  In the government, it's those pushing for huge military budgets at the expense of education. In the economy, it's the producers and consumers of the tons of cheap and tasteless goods, including food, movies and music.  None of them understand the long -term consequences of shoving their rules and procedures down everyone's throat.  The only way to escape people with oversimplified views of the world is hiding away on Aldous Huxley's Island.  

All over the world architects, real and figurative, do build spaces to be filled with light and love,  but the light is often blocked by people with oversimplified views.

Nico Colombant - Père Extraordinaire

I first visited Reno, Nevada in 1998 because it was on my way during a 4-week long coast-to-coast trip with friends from Croatia. Maybe we would not have stopped but for the curiosity to see "the divorce capital of the world" which was all we had ever heard about it in Europe. You sort of went to Las Vegas for a quick marriage and then to Reno for a quick divorce. During this first visit, we all concluded that Reno must be the ugliest and most boring city in America and I for one thought I would never see it again. So I was incredulous when my colleague, VOA's Africa correspondent and French-speaking reporter extraordinaire, announced that he was moving to Reno with his lovely family. 

What would a person in my view closer to Europe than to America do in Reno? But Nico's online posts indicated he and his family were thriving in the desert town, which also turned out to be the home of one of the world's leading mezzos Dolora Zajick. First impressions could be wrong, so it was time to give Reno another look, this time through the eyes of local residents and see if one has to turn into a cowboy to live there. I already knew Nico's wife drove a truck.  So I made my second ever trip to Reno this past April.

Well, my French lessons surely paid off because I am not sure their kids would have accepted me quite as well if I spoke only English. I heard more French music with Nico driving us around Reno in his European size car (no, he has not turned into a cowboy), and I felt more at home being a guest in his house than I have in the longest time.  Mostly I was impressed with what a wonderful father he is.  Nico has indulged my request to share his fatherhood experience to inspire other multi-lingual families.  Much to learn from this père extraordinaire.

Nico Colombant, Père Extraordinaire, Reno, NV

French with my Kids in a Francophone Desert
by Nico Colombant, Reno Nevada

There are strict disciples of bilingualism, such as my mother. At dinner parties, these disciples will praise bilingualism to the high heavens. Every research paper indicating bilingualism is good for the brain, for living longer, for being smarter, for being more creative, they clip, repost, brag about.

A Family Tradition

For me, it was easy. My father is French and my mother is a francophile of the highest order. I was born in France, but when we moved to the United States, I went to a French school, where my mom taught English. Most of my friends were French-speaking. My parents had French parties with French food and French wine. I went to France every other summer to be with my grandparents, watching the Tour de France on a small black and white television, drawing water from a backyard well and picking raspberries.

As a kid in Washington, D.C.:  playing soccer was one of the rare activities in which I spoke English

I went back to France for university studies and got my first job in Paris, before going off for adventures in southeast Asia, and then penniless, returning to live for a while with my parents in Washington, D.C. Even though I was mostly French-educated, I felt stifled by the lack of space in France. When asked where I am from, I now say, I am a Frenchman from America.

Bilingual Kids

I now have two children of my own. Both were born in Washington, D.C., where I had many French-speaking friends with kids of their own. We now live in Reno, Nevada, a francophone desert of sorts, where French speakers are few and far in between the Sierra mountains surrounding us. For some reason, I'm not ready to give up on French and I don't think I ever will. As a part-time stay at home Dad, besides how to play soccer, I am also teaching my kids how to speak French.

My two boys seem to approve of their lifestyle in Reno, Nevada.

I don't really care about studies touting the merits of bilingualism. To me, it just feels natural. My French language is my culture, and I want it to be a part of theirs as well. French opens the gateway to new ways of thinking, laughing and being. Why not give them that opportunity?

My boys are 5 and 3 now. Most days, they are the only people I speak French to, which also keeps my own French alive. We may have mangled sentences and jumbled words here and there, but French is our way of communicating. Sometimes other boys at a park will run up to us and ask us how to say something in French. My five-year-old is full of pride when he can answer.

Desert Challenges

It's not easy to keep a language going in a desert. We usually listen to music with French lyrics. Alpha Blondy, Manu Chao, MC Solaar, La Fouine, Francis Cabrel, and Stromae are some of our shared favorites. If ever the kids watch something on a screen, it's usually in French. If I buy a DVD, I make sure it has a French language option. We subscribe to French magazines for kids. We read French books. I share Cartesian logic and doubt.

My wife, Kari, an American from Oklahoma, speaks some French, which also helps. We met in French-speaking West Africa as journalists. Even though, we don't exclusively speak French at home, I am always speaking French with my kids. On home base whenever guests aren't around, if they start playing with each other in English, I try steering their play conversation back to French.

Before we were married and had kids, here I am with Kari in Senegal

My Theory of Language Domination

To keep a second language going, I also think it can't be completely dominated by another. Unlike my mother, I am actually more a proponent of multilingualism (rather than just bilingualism).

My older boy is finishing kindergarden at a public school which has an immersion program in Spanish. Rather than complicating matters, I think the schooling in Spanish has helped his French. Sometimes when I pick him up from school, excited to have just played with friends in English at the afterschool program he goes to, he can't disassociate English words from French ones, and speaks in a jumbled way. He'll throw in a few Spanish words as well. I gently rephrase his sentences into better French, and after a few minutes in the car, he's back to speaking mostly French.

The Merits of Multilingualism

When I lived in Africa, I noticed many children spoke four to five languages, one with their father, another with their mother, a third with their friends, a fourth at school and sometimes a fifth at the market. Each language has its purpose, making each useful and alive. I would say, pompously or not, that each language gives a new window on the world, a multitude of possible connections, a broadened compassion for others, and a new perspective on abstract thought.

Buying fresh baguette as a family is part of the experience

Whenever I hear about a language disappearing, I think that's one of the saddest realities of our increasingly futuristic, tech-dominated, elites taking most of the cake world. I am not the same person in French or English, but both languages make me who I am.

Wouldn't it be monotonous, narrow-minded and restraining if everyone just spoke English or Chinese? I find efforts to diversify and to keep a multitude of languages alive on the Internet extremely laudable. I also believe more languages should be taught in schools, and at an earlier age. Language immersion schools should be the rule rather than the exception.

Of course, I'd love my kids just the same if they stopped speaking French. But to me "I love you" and "Je t'aime" don't have the same meaning, so if they were to speak only English, we would be losing out on some of the magic and depth of this curious human world. And the more magic and depth you can handle, I believe, the better.

Maseco likes to draw French flags and the Eiffel Tower.

Zinedine dressed as Super Dupont

Nico Colombant teaches radio and online video in Reno, Nevada, and also coaches soccer.  His wife Kari Barber is an assistant professor in journalism at the University Nevada, Reno.  They work on documentaries together including a current project called Struggle and Hope about Oklahoma's Still Surviving All-black Towns.
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October 11, 2016
It is with great sadness that I have to add an update to Nico's story:  his younger son Zinedine died of inexplicable cardiac arrest in early October.