Fantasia

Fantasia 2000 An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack (Walt Disney 60986) Walt Disney's "Fantasia" was always the most high-minded of animated films. The original 1940 feature wasn't just a visual and aural tour de force; it was also a sly lesson in music appreciation, bringing the classics to audiences who otherwise might never have heard Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" or Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours." Naturally, there's an element of edification in "Fantasia 2000" as well. From the opening semaphore of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, conductor James Levine -- assuming the role Leopold Stokowski held in the original -- does his best to make classical music seem as entertaining and exciting as a John Williams "Star Wars" score.

"Fantasia 2000" is what Walt Disney had in mind all along. In the late 1930s, when he and maestro Leopold Stokowski began formulating plans for what would become the original "Fantasia," Disney's thought was to create a marriage of animation and music that would be updated annually, with new pieces replacing old. If nothing else, he thought, such an effort would introduce more and more of the public to more and more of the music Disney so loved....

"Fantasia" is one of the most deservedly beloved classics of the cinematic canon, a rite of passage that nearly every film fan can remember experiencing for the first time. Which makes it all the more gratifying to report that "Fantasia 2000," which opens today at the Maryland Science Center, does the name proud. Traditionalists who blanched at the thought of Disney's releasing an updated "Fantasia" -- with new animated sequences and new musical selections -- can be of good cheer. Not only is the 1940 film well served by this iteration, but it also seems that Walt Disney's original intent for the movie has begun to be realized, albeit 60 years late.

Fantasia on Ice'Skates will be dancing across the ice this weekend, as the Columbia Figure Skating Club brings its spring ice show, "A Fantasia on Ice," to the Columbia Ice Rink.See more than 135 trained skaters, including more than 100 children, perform to the music of "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas." And enjoy the classic French children's story "Madeline" as it is brought to life on the ice through expressive skating and Parisian music.Performances will be on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the Columbia Ice Rink, 5876 Thunder Hill Road in Columbia.

IT WAS A sanguine tragedy of the utmost horror: infanticide, fratricide, kidnapping, abduction, beheading and burning at the stake.Plus, it had great music.So why was I suppressing an impulse to laugh during the Baltimore Opera Company's creditable performance of "Il Trovatore" last week?Because scenes from the Marx Brothers comedy "A Night at the Opera" kept flashing into my mind. An old film that spoofs grand opera, including Verdi's "Trovatore," in the unique style of those madcap comics.

So there's talk of the Orioles alighting at Disney World in a 10,000-seat spring training roost? Let's see, Disney gets 33 million visitors a year, divided by 365 days a year equals 90,000 visitors a day. Spring training is peak season so count on a few thousand folks more. A quarter of Disney's visitors hail from overseas so they'll want to see American baseball and a goodly chunk come from New York (read: Yankees/Mets fans.) And to think, Baltimoreans chafe at sharing the Orioles with Washington!

Because I believe that children have a spiritual life that can be touched by the fine arts, I am attempting to introduce mine to what our mothers might have called culture.It is not going well.Because I believe that in the arts, children can find a way to express what they feel but cannot say, because I believe the arts can give them fun and joy and a way to calm the turmoil inside, I have not only paid for pottery classes and painting lessons and dance camp, but I also have bought tickets to ballets and symphonies.

Q: My husband and I are interested in going through the Panama Canal, but not on a cruise. Is there any way we can do it?A: The short answer to this, one of the most-asked of all travel questions, is yes: Argo Tours of Panama conducts partial transits of the canal every other Saturday and full transits twice a year.The partial transits leave at 8 a.m. from Dock 17 in Balboa on the Pacific Ocean side of the canal.The ship sails though the Miraflores Locks and cruises Miraflores Lake up to Pedro Miguel Locks, but does not enter the locks.

Remember the day Richard Wagner met Elmer Fudd?If you grew up watching cartoons -- and chances are, you did -- you know it came in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, "What's Opera, Doc?"For millions, the first brush with Wagner's "Die Walkuere" came not in the stentorian soprano of Birgit Nilsson, but in the glottal rasp of Elmer's fractured Valkyrie melody:"Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit . . ."A similar collision occurred in "Fantasia," when Walt Disney set -- Tchaikovsky, Dukas and Ponchielli to animation of balletic hippos, hopping mushrooms and dancing brooms.

He's been dead for 243 years, but Johann Sebastian Bach can still draw a crowd.Yesterday, hundreds of music lovers made their way to St. David's Church in Roland Park for all or part of the 17th annual Baltimore Bach Marathon -- 7 1/2 hours of nonstop Bach organ music played by 15 of the area's best church organists."