1260 N Wetherly Drive

Igor Stravinsky ended his life as a resident of Los Angeles-a city that, I’d always heard, barely acknowledged him. On earlier visits I’d thought about looking up his address, but never did. Last month, I finally went.

Easing along Sunset Boulevard, it’s easy to miss North Wetherly, a narrow street that twists sharply up a steep hill. Climb just a little way and there it is: a beautiful ranch house perched above the roar of LA. Wow, I thought. Stravinsky wrote “Agon” here.

I wandered around the block hoping to find a neighbor who might shed some light on this long-ago resident. A few houses up, I ran into a couple standing outside their place. Framed by their gleaming white Porsche Cayman, the middle-aged pair-the guy originally from Jersey City and his pretty blonde wife who clearly had spent a little too much time under the knife-seemed surprised when I asked how often musicians show up to glimpse the great man’s old home. Apparently, not often. They’d never seen anyone on such a mission.

Then the woman floored me. She said that only a year or two earlier, a stray piece of mail had been delivered to their house: a note from the 1950s, written to a film critic who once lived there-and signed by Igor Stravinsky. Apparently he and his wife, Vera (who, I have to say, looked incredibly stylish back in the day), were on vacation when the letter went missing in the postal system.

Excited, I asked if I could see it. She declined, saying she had no idea where it was. I told her it was a historical document and urged her to find it and pass it along to a musicologist. I hope she does.

12/6/2012