Countess

This is a story about a doctor and a countess. It is a story of a dark-haired woman in an old raincoat and a weary man in medical whites, of her secret identity and his long-suffering medical staff. This story is set in Newark, N.J., in a sprawling public hospital complex that cares for the victims of pediatric AIDS. It is the story of a man who answers a telephone because it is ringing. And a woman who takes the PATH train into Newark at 7:30 p.m., a raincoat draped over her sweatsuit, to meet a man she does not know, because she hopes to give him money to help children suffering from AIDS.

The Arden Theatre first staged Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music in 1995 at the Arts Bank on Broad and South Streets. Two decades on, they've upstaged the musical with a gorgeously designed, magnificently presented production that, as a capstone to the Arden's 25th season, revels in its success. Hugh Wheeler's book (inspired by Ingmar Bergman's 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night ) depicts the intermingled romantic follies of three couples: mid-40s lawyer Fredrik Egerman (Christopher Patrick Mullen)

On the last night of 1953, a father sat down and wrote the older of his two daughters a remarkable letter, so brimming with affection and pride that it remains a testament of absolute paternal love. "I have sometimes regretted that you turned into such a very lovely and attractive woman because I would certainly have loved you just as much, and very possibly more, if you had remained the ungainly, lanky creature with odd teeth and slightly receding chin that you presented when you first went to school.

Mary Bessborough, 98, of Center City, a native of Radnor who married a British aristocrat and later started the successful effort in London to preserve Benjamin Franklin's last existing home, died Saturday, April 13, at her home. Lady Bessborough raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the restoration of Franklin's London residence. In the 1950s she learned about the house at 36 Craven St. in London when her husband showed her a plaque marking Franklin's residence. Over the years, the home had been damaged and fallen into disrepair.

Janice Countess of Medford has a different perspective than most people about conflict. "We don't want to characterize conflict negatively," she said. "We think of it as a challenge. " Countess makes her living at the art of settling disputes. She works on behalf of the Burlington County courts and with more than 30 South Jersey schools, helping students resolve differences - some potentially violent - before they get to the courts. Her newest idea - to create an army of peacemakers - took Countess to Evesham last week.

The Hope Zone opens with Alda Cortese, as a salty recovering alcoholic named Countess Willhelmena Lynch, relating a lengthy anecdote about a gynecological exam. The anecdote has a punch line that brings down the house, but I have no idea what it has to do with the rest of the play - or, for that matter, why the character is named Countess. But then there's a lot that's mystifying in The Hope Zone, a misbegotten mishmash of eccentric comedy and spiritual melodrama that is neither funny enough to work as the first nor persuasive enough to succeed as the second.

A lawsuit seeking the reinstatement of two members of a Moorestown affordable-housing committee will be decided by the end of the month, a judge ruled yesterday. Judge Harold B. Wells 3d, of Superior Court in Burlington County, also determined that it was not a conflict of interest for Jeremy Countess, the township solicitor, to defend the township and the June 8 council resolution that ousted Greg Lawson and Diane Powell, who is also a council member. Wells promised a decision by July 29 because he will be away in August.

Richard Strauss once said his music could portray a fork on the table. That bit of bravado conceals his greater gift, that of personifying ideas on the opera stage. How often in his operas does Strauss have his soprano stand on the brink of revelation to muse on the dramatic understanding of love and life? The Marschallin, Ariadne, Arabella, Helena, Daphne, the Empress all have Earth- stopping monologues in which love and truth accommodate. The Countess has one, too, in Strauss' final opera, Capriccio, but her choice is intellectual.

The Marriage of Figaro, a 1786 comic opera by Mozart concerning servants who turn the tables on their aristocratic master, amounts to an improbable, often inane story. Only good acting, coupled with fine musical execution, can compensate for all the silliness. Fortunately, good dramatics, fine singing and an excellent pit orchestra of Curtis students under conductor David Agler's firm baton abundantly distinguished Saturday's Figaro performance by the Curtis Institute of Music Opera Theatre at the Haverford School's Centennial Hall.

This morning's message is simple: When you desperately need a home, sit up and bark. A homeless human might wind up in a dirty city alley, sickened by the noise and stink. But a homeless dog might wind up in an expensively remodeled barn, on a 50-acre homestead, near a country reservoir. "Countess DeTrampe Home for Unwanted Dogs" reads the sign at the end of a gravel lane in Upper Hanover Township, the northernmost municipality in Montgomery County. Not DeTrampe as in "tramp.