Opera

HOLLYWOOD -- Turner Classic Movies is unveiling six "lost" films from the RKO library. Caught up in a legal tangle that involved King Kong creator Merian C. Cooper and then largely forgotten, the films haven't been seen in some 50 years. TCM will air the vintage collection, which includes the 1933 William Powell melodrama Double Harness as well as Rafter Romance, One Man's Journey, Stingaree, Living on Love and A Man to Remember, tomorrow and April 11. The search for the films began last April, when a viewer wanted to know why TCM had never shown Double Harness.

Anne Nesmith Wig designer Baltimore Opera Company; Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, and other theaters Salary --$70,000 Age --33 Years on the job --10 How she got started --After being involved with theater in high school, Nesmith graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in theater design and production. She went to work for a small theater in Norfolk, Va., and also began collaborating with the nearby Virginia Opera, learning the skills of building and designing wigs.

When it comes to letting loose with unbridled emotion, no one does it better than Tchaikovsky. If you go The Queen of Spades will be performed at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Kennedy Center, Virginia and New Hampshire avenues Northwest, Washington. $45-$195. 800-444-1324 or kennedy-center.org.

E.M. Forster's first novel, "Where Angels Fear To Tread," is an emotional roller coaster. That's why Mark Lanz Weiser and Roger Brunyate love the book, and it's the reason they spent seven years -- as composer and librettist, respectively -- turning it into an opera.The result of their collaboration has its world premiere tonight at the Peabody's Friedburg Hall.Forster's emotional range varies from comedy of manners to searing tragedy, and the plot contains at least two love affairs, as well as a complicated romantic triangle and a shocker of a denouement.

The Chimes agency rang in some 2,000 music lovers, and $325,000, at its fund-raising benefit at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The event featured a reception and a concert by opera star Jose Carreras.Even before the internationally renowned tenor took the stage, a buffet in the lobby hit the perfect pitch for opera aficionados such as Terry Perl, president and CEO of the Chimes; Eileen Levine, Elaine and Alvin Katz, Judith Martinak, and Susan and Gary Talles, event co-chairs; Allan Levine, the Chimes' board chair; Steve Kramer and James Phillips, board members; Hal Dahan, the evening's honoree; Dr. Cesar Castillo of St. Agnes HealthCare; Marc Winner, president of F. P. Winner Ltd.; Steve Gigliotti, VP and GM of WMAR-TV; Arlene Mandel, manager at the dental office of Feldman, Sachs & Fitzgerald; and Janice Altman, fitness-wear distributor.

Two days after his triumph as Scarpia in Annapolis Opera's "Tosca" last month, bass-baritone Sun Yu, 40, gave a recital of lieder and arias at Howard University, where his good friend and mentor, renowned baritone William Ray, 74, chairs the department of voice.The enduring affection between former teacher and student was unmistakable. Their friendship is perhaps rooted in their similar experiences. Blessed with warm, resonant voices, they faced the same sorts of barriers when establishing their operatic careers.

Performances of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" -- a great and profound work that changed the course of art, literature and philosophy, as well as music in the 19th century -- are rare.One is, therefore, grateful for a production as intelligent and beautifully mounted as the Washington Opera's which opened Saturday at the Kennedy Center. The last production I can remember at the Metropolitan Opera was almost 10 years ago. So infrequent are "Tristans" appearances, that a production in Seattle last summer, with Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen in the title roles, drew an audience from all over the world.

The setting fit a description of the opening scene of the Italian opera "Don Giovanni -- "in a handsome garden before a handsome house." Only this was the fourth annual Opera and Wine Dinner, an authentic alfresco Italian meal in Howard County. The event, sponsored by the Italian Wine and Food Advocates, raised $1,500 for the Peabody Conservatory's opera outreach program, which brings opera to inner city schools.Under one tent pitched on the grounds of the historic Lichendale Farm, Paul Dongarra, chef for the Dionysus' Kitchen catering company and the event's co-coordinator, prepared the evening's five-course dinner.

"Andrea Chenier" is Umberto Giordano's only opera in the international repertory. It is supposed to owe its popularity to star tenors who are attracted to the title role's passion and heroism.So much for the apparent reputation of "Chenier." The truth is rather different, as Thursday's opening performance of the Baltimore Opera's production of the opera demonstrated. This operatic treatment of events in the French Revolution is an ambitious work with a classic triangle of sensitive heroine, rebellious hero and menacing baritone.

In the old days, it used to go like this: Mom watched soap opera. Kid got home from school. Kid sat down and watched soap opera with mom. Kid grew attached to soap opera. Kid continued watching soap opera into adulthood, and passed the addiction on to the next generation. Soap characters like Luke and Laura from "General Hospital" and Roman and Marlena from "Days of Our Lives" became as familiar to kids as their friends at school -- extramarital affairs, demonic possession and diabolical twins notwithstanding.

SUNDAY HEAVEN AND HELL: The heavy metal band fronted by Ronnie James Dio is joined by other genre heavyweights Coheed and Cambria at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway. Gates open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35-$75. Go to ticketmaster.com. DANCING IN THE STREETS BLOCK PARTY: Dance in the streets of Pikesville and take a step back into the 1950s and 1960s with classic rock and classic Corvettes. An Elvis impersonator, Big Cam & The Lifters, and J.D. and the Blades perform.

Residents' sleep deprivation a danger True, spending money so docs in training can sleep seems exorbitant, but people outside medicine do not understand the toll sleep deprivation takes on health providers and patients. Most doctors in training toil in inner city hospitals and take care of the poor, who are far sicker than other patients when they arrive in hospitals. Decisions have to be made fast and procedures done quickly to save lives. Calm doctors with alert minds and steady hands make the difference between life and death for severely ill patients.

NICHOLAS MAW, 73 Composer taught at the Peabody British composer Nicholas Maw, who taught music composition at the Peabody Conservatory from 1998 until last year and who was known for his opera based on the novel Sophie's Choice, died Tuesday of heart failure in his Takoma Park home. Mr. Maw's neo-Romantic, post-modernist compositions were praised for their rich textures. His creations "forged a musical language which is truly vibrant and sensuous, and which borrows both from the old and the new," wrote David Cooper in the International Dictionary of Opera.

Instead of "bravo," the final sendoff for the Baltimore Opera Company will be an auctioneer shouting "sold." The giant Sphinx-head that once stared down on the glittery Triumphal March in Aida, the carefully detailed cathedral where Tosca sang a love duet with her painter boyfriend, the scaffold that awaited Mary, Queen of Scots - all sit wrapped up in a warehouse. They, along with hundreds of vivid costumes, props and other remnants of the company, will soon go to the highest bidder. It's a far-from-grand finale for one of the city's oldest cultural treasures.

Many an uncomfortable lesson about human nature lies within Benjamin Britten's 1945 operatic masterpiece, Peter Grimes, a tale of small-mindedness, conclusion-jumping and rapid swells of populist outrage in a seaside village. Those multilayered messages seem even more relevant than usual in the Washington National Opera's striking production at the Kennedy Center. The sight of villagers brandishing prayer books as they march off to confront the outsider Grimes, singing about how they "shall strike and strike to kill," bring to mind many an outbreak of knee-jerk, cable-TV-flamed behavior in our own society.

The news stung. An old friend had died, and I never said goodbye. I assumed she'd always be there for me. But the Baltimore Opera is gone - yet another casualty of the economic morass. I can wag a finger at corporate sponsors and major donors. But my laissez-faire attitude also contributed to the final curtain. I should have gone to more performances. I could have bought season tickets. Had I known that the illness was terminal, I would have been more attentive. Too often, perhaps, I favored Washington or New York for their grander productions.

Clifford Cole Bruck Sr., a retired Western Maryland Railway executive and longtime opera buff, died Wednesday of complications from Parkinson's disease at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland in Towson. The longtime Guilford resident was 93. Mr. Bruck was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. After graduating from Forest Park High School in 1932, he earned a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1936. Mr. Bruck also attended the University of Maryland School of Law at night, earning a degree in the 1960s.

Many an opera plot is set in motion by a wicked curse that generates terrible heartache and loss. These days, it looks as if the real world of opera has been hit with a curse every bit as pernicious. Although orchestras, art museums, theater troupes and dance companies have certainly been buffeted by the economy's precipitous decline that started last fall, opera is being hard-hit. The Baltimore Opera Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December, shortly after presenting a vividly sung production of Bellini's Norma that made it to the stage only after a longtime donor guaranteed the salaries for the cast.

The recession - or is it the Great Depression II? - continues to take its toll on the local arts scene. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra laid off five of its 67 administrative employees and changed one full-time position to part-time yesterday in an effort to reduce expenditures. Those moves, along with a decision not to fill certain open staff positions, will save the BSO about $500,000. "We can see that the economic downturn is going to be a lot more prolonged than we had expected," president/CEO Paul Meecham said.

Why did the Baltimore Opera declare bankruptcy? Lots of reasons, starting with the global recession, but not ending there. Certainly endowments have lost value, and certainly modern opera productions are expensive to mount and there's little room for the kind of loss in revenue - ticket sales and underwriting - that the Baltimore Opera experienced this fall, even as it prepared to stage the always-popular Aida. But there's something else going on, and it has been going on for a long time, and it starts with way too many people staying home and watching television.