Majestic

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."

The Annapolis Opera has never mounted a more tightly conceived production than the "Tosca" it presented last week at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts.Puccini's potboiler plot moved ahead with bristling intensity. Most of the afternoon, I held on for dear life as Scarpia plotted, Cavaradossi professed his undying devotion for his beloved and the Roman republic, and Floria Tosca, true to her big aria, lived and died for art, honor and love.All of the operatic elements meshed Sunday afternoon.

A television executive's dream of an elegant private academy in Finksburg cleared a major zoning hurdle yesterday, allowing Dr. Frederick G. Smith to build the red-brick and white-columned Georgian quadrangle he envisions.Carroll County Board of Zoning Appeals voted unanimously to grant a height variance for buildings on the 95-acre campus in the 2600 block of Old Westminster Pike.Smith, a 49-year-old dentist and vice president at his family's Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc. in Baltimore, has a contract to purchase the land to build his Gerstell Academy.

I knew we were in for an exotic vacation when - a few hours after arriving in Phuket - we walked from our hotel down to the beach and came upon a pair of baby elephants. It was around 3 o'clock, and the animals were returning from their afternoon swim in the green waters of the Andaman Sea on Thailand's West Coast.As we met them on a path, their trainer barked commands in Thai. The lead animal knelt down on one knee and bowed toward us. The bow - called a "wai" - is an act of respect in Thai culture.

They are ominous and beautiful at the same time. Volcanic peaks capture nature at its muscle-flexing best, a fierceness only thinly veiled by a blanket of wildflowers or pristine snow.The Cascade Mountains, a 1,000-mile-long rocky spine that runs from British Columbia to northern California, has enough volcanoes, craters and ancient lava flows to occupy visitors for two weeks. They form the eastern edge of "The Ring of Fire," the volcanic mountain ranges that encircle the Pacific Ocean. The number of volcanoes and the variety of activity in the Pacific Northwest are such that the U.S. Geological Survey has its research center in Vancouver, Wash.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Father Time came disguised as Jack Nicklaus, swinging a golf club, not a scythe, with the near magic of all those glorious yesteryears. It was a personal threat to turn back the clock. He pressed on, pushed himself to extract the maximum and then the inevitable He could jump no higher. The top of the leader board was out of reach. But the valiant demonstration produced by this semi-middle-aged man was the most imposing story line of this, the 62nd Masters Tournament.Jack, not so nimble and not so quick, didn't win, but came precariously close to staging what would have been golf's most startling upset in history.

A garland of 1914 roses sheds flaking plaster dandruff down on the seats at Eutaw Street's closed and beleaguered Hippodrome Theatre, but the years have not destroyed the architectural majesty of the downtown entertainment palace now being touted for a big-ticket restoration.Rain splashes through a threadbare roof. Ropes and counterweights hang in tatters within the rusty stage housing. A long strip of an artist's idyllic mural lies atop the old orchestra pit -- in front of the expansive stage where Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters, Bob Hope, George Burns, Dinah Shore, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis and Henny Youngman once delighted Baltimoreans.

In a lush, sensuous dreamscape that fully exploits the cinema's potential for virtually wordless emotional communication, Martin Scorsese has taken yet another experimental turn with "Kundun," his interpretation of the early life of the 14th Tibetan Dalai Lama.If his 17th film seems to resemble a meditative tone poem more than the pulsating, kinetic paeans to mob life for which he is most famous, "Kundun" (the title refers to the name used to address the Dalai Lama) still bursts with the love of movement and color that marks Scorsese's best works.

BEIJING -- The Forbidden City is a spectacular palace that Chinese emperors once called home, but it desperately needs a face lift. Vermilion paint peels from the walls, weeds sprout from the ceramic tile roofs and pieces of broken sculpture lie strewn about one of the courtyards.In nearby Hebei Province, two sections of the Great Wall -- one dating to the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) -- were demolished this year to make way for a new road and the expansion of a vegetable company.As a nation, China bases much of its claim to greatness on its 5,000 years of history and ancient culture, yet at times it treats some of its treasures like second-hand clothes.

Stacie Tokasz plays soccer seven days a week. A junior at Centennial, Tokasz practices or plays games for the Eagles after school Monday through Friday. Her club team -- Maryland Majestic -- practices Tuesday and Thursday nights, Saturday morning and plays games on Sunday.Is Tokasz tired?Not now. She's hurt. Stress fracture in her left foot."The doctor said it was overuse," Tokasz said.Tokasz is joined on the Majestic by Centennial teammates Mandy Zachmann, Jane Williams and Alexia Vogler.