Adam And Eve

The last concert composer Franz Joseph Haydn attended before his death took place in Vienna on March 27, 1808. The program consisted of a single work, Haydn's own oratorio, "The Creation," an extraordinary musical account he'd composed more than a decade earlier of the Book of Genesis. When conductor Antonio Salieri's chorus blazed in with that thumping C major chord at "And there was light" near the beginning of the piece, the enthusiastic audience immediately burst into applause. Haydn, a feeble 76-year-old with only a few months to live, pointed heavenward and said, "Not from me -- from there above comes everything."

Ah, the war between the sexes! When did it all begin? To quote a profound source -- the Mindbenders' 1965 pop hit, "Game of Love": "It started long ago in the Garden of Eden."That's the setting for a somewhat more profound exploration of the subject -- "The Apple Tree," a 1966 musical comedy based on Mark Twain's satirical "Diary of Adam and Eve" by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, with additional material by Jerome Coopersmith. It also happens to be a setting well-suited to the Evergreen House meadow -- site of Theatre Hopkins' annual al fresco production.

MENTION MARK Twain, and people instantly visualize a mustached man in white, making witty remarks and clever observations about people and life situations.We all know him for the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but he also wrote many not-so-famous stories that reflect values important in our modern lives.Such a story is the "Diary of Adam and Eve." At 8 p.m. today, tomorrow and Sunday and Sept. 18-20 at Firehouse Pub and Grill, Mount Airy Players will present an original adaptation of this comedy, which gives us a tongue-in-cheek look at what life might have been like for the First Man and Woman.

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- This morning, I found my wife of 10 years packing her valise. "What are you doing," I asked. "I'm leaving you, David," she told me. "Is it because Vermont's civil union law, guaranteeing full benefits for committed same-sex partners, makes our traditional marriage completely meaningless?" I asked. "Precisely," she said. Vermont's civil union law took effect July 1, and within days there is plenty of evidence that the bill's more strident opponents were correct in their dire predictions.

Everyone eventually checks out of the Hotel Eden -- they have to.But the Peabody Conservatory of Music is betting that "Hotel Eden," a new comic opera about three couples who can't seem to get along in Paradise, will want to make audiences check in. This 1989 opera, which receives its East Coast premiere at Friedberg Hall this Thursday, has Peabody Opera Theater director Roger Brunyate rapturously evoking Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" when he speaks about...

Midway between the White House and the Washington Monument, a line of tubby sculptures newly plumped down along Constitution Avenue seems as happily inflated as the cartoon balloons in Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade -- every bit as charming, just as much fun, but a whole lot more ironic, puncturing people puffed up with inert gases and hot air.Strolling among them at the entrance to the Ellipse, Jean Talbert, 39, looks up. Twelve feet of bloated bronze manhood...

SOMETHING'S in the air, and it's got people taking their clothes off. A National Public Radio reporter confesses that she did her broadcasts from Baghdad in the altogether. Two Southwest Airlines pilots are fired for flying a plane in their birthday suits. A photographer fills a shopping mall escalator in the Midwest with naked people. The annual report of the Progressive insurance company features nude photos - of an 82-year-old man. In Dayton, Ohio, a younger man spends two days stuck in the air-conditioning duct of a clothing store, wearing only his socks.

Greatness is accorded the treatment it deserves in "Rembrandt: The Museum's Collection," the Baltimore Museum of Art's inspiring and deeply moving exhibit of Rembrandt prints (through April 21). The fact that this is a home-grown show, drawn from the museum's collection rather than from sources around the world, and the fact that it consists of modest-sized prints rather than big, splashy paintings, should not lead the prospective visitor to think of it as anything other than one of the most important exhibits we will ever be offered.

Even if I didn't know the title of the exhibition -- "Jesus 2000" -- I would have known the minute I entered the small gallery: I was surrounded by images of Christ. One painting depicts Jesus standing against a royal blue sky amid shafts of sunlit clouds. His coat, made of colorful flags from many nations, billows behind him as he beckons with his right arm. In another image, Jesus, bare-chested and wearing blue jeans and baseball cap, is a carpenter. And from still another work, a collage comprising digital images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a somber Jesus seems to gaze directly into my eyes.

"The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons," edited by Bob Mankoff (Pocket Books, 105 pages, $19.95). Adam and Eve, unshockingly naked, sit in a grove of shedding apple trees. The caption speaks for Adam: "I can't help thinking there's a book in this." A few pages later, a beach scene: A uniformed cop stands, mildly menacingly, above a folding-chaise seated man with a large book in his hands and lap. Thc policeman speaks: "I'm sorry, sir, but Dostoyevsky is not considered summer reading.