Vienna

Chris Botti Contemporary jazz artist Chris Botti, known for his romantic sound and trumpet improvisations, performs at Wolf Trap on Wednesday. Botti won a Grammy this year for the song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" from the album To Love Again. The show is at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Wolf Trap's Filene Center, 1551 Trap Road in Vienna, Va. Tickets are $22 or $40. Call 410-481-6500 or 800-955-5566, or visit wolf-trap.org.

VIENNA - About 4,500 rockfish were released into the Nanticoke River yesterday by Delmarva Power's fish hatchery.The average length of the fish, which were tagged for identification and tracking, was 6 to 8 inches, said Matt Likovich of Delmarva Power.The fish, which were taken from a pond at the power company's plant in Dorchester County on the Eastern Shore, were part of a study by Maryland fisheries officials of winter mortality rates. About 8,500 fish were put into the pond last fall, and the 4,500 that survived were released yesterday.

VIENNA, Austria -- In this once home to rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church is being buffeted by an unprecedented series of attacks and scandals that has left many Austrians questioning their faith.A half-million Austrians signed a petition last month demanding radical reform, including allowing priests to marry and women to become priests. And in a surge of disillusion, more than 35,000 people have abandoned the church in recent months.The turmoil began last spring when a former Catholic school student came forward to accuse the head of the church, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, of sexually molesting him 20 years ago.The 75-year-old Cardinal Groer, who is also the archbishop of Vienna, declined to comment on the allegations and stepped down as head of the Bishops' Conference.

Dr. Heinrich Gross, 90, a psychiatrist who worked at a clinic where the Nazis killed and conducted experiments on thousands of children, died Dec. 15, his family announced in Vienna, Austria. Dr. Gross, who was implicated in nine deaths as part of a Nazi plot to eliminate "worthless lives," had escaped trial in March after a court ruled he suffered from severe dementia. He was a leading doctor in Vienna's infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic. Historians and survivors of the clinic had accused him of killing or taking part in the clinic's experiments on thousands of children deemed by the Nazis to be physically, mentally or otherwise unfit for Adolf Hitler's vision of a perfect world.

Baltimore-born director / choreographer Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus (revisited) opens a one-week run at Washington's Kennedy Center on Tuesday. Winner of a 1986 Obie Award, the show is set in early 20th century Vienna and uses music (by Richard Peaslee), text (by Charles L. Mee), dance and imagery (suggested by the work of Viennese painters Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt) to depict a society on the verge of dissolution. Seen in its original incarnation at the Kennedy Center in 1986, the work was an eerie, dream-like intermingling of sexuality and war, Freud and Hitler.

TV soap opera 'Guiding Light' shoots final scenes The cast and crew of "Guiding Light" - U.S. television's longest-running soap opera - have finished shooting their final scenes in a northern New Jersey town. Afterward, they gathered at Peapack Reformed Church for a service to remember the show. The church has served as the site for weddings and funerals in "Guiding Light's" fictional town of Springfield. The Rev. Kathryn Henry recalled that the show's title referred to a lamp put in a church window by the fictional Rev. Rutledge to welcome parishioners seeking guidance.

Vienna. -- Under gray skies occasionally spitting rain, surrounded by cold gray water and miles of winter-brown marsh, we're out on the Nanticoke River in a couple of small boats wondering about spring.It's here all right, though it's only early March and sure feels like winter to visiting outlanders. In the river the white perch know it's spring and are on the move. A trio of commercial fishermen, local people, know it too; a little below Vienna they're emptying big perch into their skiff from a fike net.Ospreys, who also fish for a living, obviously can tell it's spring.

Austria is putting 1,000 candles on its birthday cake this year, and Western Maryland College is celebrating with a party on this side of the Atlantic.This year's German-American Day Friday will be devoted to Austria, the second-largest German-speaking nation, said Mohamed Esa, assistant professor of foreign languages.Most of the celebration is free and open to the public. "Osterreich -- 1,000 Jahre" (Austria -- 1,000 Years) will feature an Austrian musician, an Austrian diplomat and WMC professors.

Anne Arundel Community College's Moonlight Troupers' production of Tom Stoppard's "On the Razzle" represents a challenge for any group of actors. Stoppard's fast-paced farce demands much from its 17-member cast, including high energy, glibness of tongue and physical dexterity. At a performance Saturday, for the first few minutes I couldn't find much in "Razzle" that dazzled me - the actors recited lines without clear articulation and with scant humor. The little laughter elicited from the audience resulted from Stoppard's fast-paced dialogue, with so much wordplay that it resembled a foreign language.

In a musical textbook, you might find separate definitions for "operetta" and "musical." But Jack Everly, the BSO's engaging principal pops conductor, clearly sees the terms as interchangeable, which explains his final offering of the season: "Vienna to Broadway." The program, which opened yesterday afternoon at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on a stage decked out with what looked like left-over drapery from the Lawrence Welk Show, crams in Johann Strauss, Franz Lehar, Gilbert and Sullivan, Rudolf Friml, Richard Rodgers, Andrew Lloyd Webber and more.