Opening Night

Question: Do you know the Philadelphia Orchestra had an opening night without the Philadelphia Orchestra? Answer: No, but if you hum a few bars I can fake it. And faking it is exactly what the Philadelphia Orchestra Association did last night as it went ahead with opening-night festivities - without the guest of honor in attendance. The centerpiece of the glittering six-hour-plus celebration was to have been the Fabulous Philadelphians playing Barber and Dvorak under the sure baton of music director Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Put on a sleek, black ensemble and be ready to wait in line. Two nightclubs will open next weekend, one on each side of the Delaware River. It's like a game of nightlife musical chairs. Try to follow this: The Milkbar will begin operations in the remodeled second floor of Taylor's/Iguana Beach Club in Cherry Hill next Friday. And in the location that used to be the Milkbar, off North Eighth Street in Philadelphia, Shampoo will open the next night. Of the two nightspots, Shampoo is much larger in size and style.

They'd waited through the snowiest winter in Philadelphia history, a bleak spring training, and the unfurling of a 247-foot-long American flag, and now - just two batters into the 1996 season - was the moment that 25,000 Phillies fans had come to see. A routine fly ball to left field. Gammy-legged Darren Daulton didn't have to take a step - good thing - as he snagged the lazy line drive by Colorado's Ellis Burks, yet the upper deck at the Vet burst into a standing ovation.

When The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit opens the Cheltenham Center for the Arts' 1991-92 season of plays tonight, theatergoers will be treated to a newly refurbished and more comfortable Cheltenham Theater, plus the directing talents of its new artistic director, Ken Marini. With everything neat and new-looking, perfectly staged and rehearsed, many may be surprised to know that just one week ago, activities at the converted Victorian school house moved at a near frantic pace. Marini not only directed his actors in rehearsal, he was in the midst of overseeing renovation of the theater and construction of the play's set. "My day starts at 7 (a.m.

For many of the 10 area youths who will perform in the Glassboro Summer Theater production of Oliver! this month, it's the thrill of a lifetime. For one, it's a dream come true. Along with performers from Runnemede, Turnersville, Voorhees, Mantua, Pitman and Mount Laurel who will sing and dance their way through the 2 1/2- hour musical, Matthew Swank, 13, of Shiloh, is looking forward to tomorrow's opening night at Wilson Concert Hall at Glassboro State College. For him, it will be a night when he realizes something he has "always dreamed of doing.

Ridley's Joe Giltinan is becoming more and more comfortable with three- point shots. And it's not just because he's making a higher percentage of them with every game he plays. "I just think it's safer to make threes right now," Giltinan said. Giltinan was hurt for the second time this season while converting a first- quarter layup in the Green Raiders' 62-40 rout of Hatboro-Horsham Friday night in a PIAA District 1 Class AAAA first-round playoff game. "I don't know what it is, but I have gone down a couple times now on layups and it's a little scary," he said.

In 1992, when Republicans renominated George W. Bush's father as their presidential candidate, the star attraction on opening night was Patrick J. Buchanan, who painted the Democrats as morally decadent. And even former President Ronald Reagan told a joke about a certain Democrat who said he didn't inhale. But all knives have been sheathed in Philadelphia, on orders from the son. Viewers in search of blood and guts last night had to surf over to ABC for Dennis Miller's Monday Night Football debut.

NEW YORK - The scene would have been hard to imagine three months ago, when Julie Taymor was pushed aside as director of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," an unprecedentedly expensive play whose well-publicized troubles had already made it the butt of late-night jokes. But there was Taymor returning Tuesday for the long-postponed opening night. She got a huge ovation and chants of "Julie, Julie" as she was welcomed onstage to kisses and hugs from Bono and the Edge - collaborators who had brought her into the project years ago, but later played a role in her ouster from the $70 million production.

For Charles Boettger, show time is dine time. A top-shelf, fancy-shmancy time to dine on such strange-sounding dishes as George Washington Valley Forge Oyster Stew, or King Arthur Herb Fire Roasted Wild Turkey, or maybe La Bamba Roasted Loin of Veal. They're all part of Boettger's creative, opening-night menus over the past six years at the Walnut Street Theater, 8th and Walnut streets. Thirty-one shows ago, Boettger, executive chef with the J. Cabot Catering Co., was tapped for the task of preparing dinner for the theater's trustees and their guests on each of the Walnut's five opening nights.

As it turned out, the opening night of the Philadelphia Orchestra's 112th season need not have taken place in exile after all. The Kimmel Center labor negotiations, which drove the orchestra across the Schuylkill to the Irvine Auditorium and the Penn Museum for its Thursday concert and gala, now appear to be heading toward resolution, and the union Wednesday promised no disturbances of performances for days to come. But nobody knew that Oct. 6. The turnout of 1,000 or so for the fund-raising event was less than half what a full Verizon Hall would have held.

  Rummage sales can be a bit like speed dating: You dash from prospect to prospect, making instant decisions about whether there's a potential love connection. In the heat of the moment, impulse reigns, opportunities are missed, sparks fly. But the thrill of the find is what it's all about. No wonder then that the spring rummage sale at the First Presbyterian Church of Moorestown celebrates its 95th year on Wednesday. Since Woodrow Wilson was president, this annual event - such an occasion that people have altered vacation plans to attend - demands the sweat equity of more than 50 volunteers for a one night/one morning sale that attracts more than 600 hard-core hunters and gatherers.

A big sign off Route 73 in Winslow Township once directed music lovers into what seemed like just a wooded area with a few houses. But several blocks back, there was a seminal source of entertainment for mid-20th century African Americans, who often were excluded from mainstream events. "Back in those woods was my Daddy's Tippin Inn," said Helen Toomer Beverly, 76. "You turned off 73 and within a block, you could hear the music and smell my mother's fried chicken. Buses would come from Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

For as long as anyone can remember, the last Saturday night in January has played out in the same slightly paradoxical way for Philadelphia's Grand Old Lady of Locust Street. A comely crowd of women in gowns and white-tie-and-tailed men assembles for her birthday. Music is played, speeches are made - and then the revelers file out of the Academy of Music to other spaces for dinner and dancing, leaving the hall they came to fete still and dark. This year, though, the honored guest was around for the whole party.

Hello there It was Krissy's first opening night as a subscriptions department apprentice at the Walnut Street Theatre. Her adrenaline was already running high when she saw casting apprentice Dawn pull carpentry apprentice Cornelius away from his date. During the previous several weeks, as cast and crew worked toward that March 2006 opening night of Trying , Dawn had urged Krissy, who worked at the theater's Center City location, to find some way to talk to Cornelius, who worked at the shop in Port Richmond.

Christopher Durang, America's self-appointed satirist, the theater's oldest living teenager, wrote New City Stage's current show, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them two years ago. An assault on the "war on terror," this is the perfect demonstration of how short the shelf life of political humor is. On his worst day, Stephen Colbert wouldn't foist off stuff this stale on us. The plot begins when Felicity (Ginger Dayle, the cast's...

As it turned out, the opening night of the Philadelphia Orchestra's 112th season need not have taken place in exile after all. The Kimmel Center labor negotiations, which drove the orchestra across the Schuylkill to the Irvine Auditorium and the Penn Museum for its Thursday concert and gala, now appear to be heading toward resolution, and the union Wednesday promised no disturbances of performances for days to come. But nobody knew that Oct. 6. The turnout of 1,000 or so for the fund-raising event was less than half what a full Verizon Hall would have held.

As if the Philadelphia Orchestra's opening night didn't have enough problems? The concert's guest star, soprano Dawn Upshaw, canceled her Thursday appearance because of a death in her family. On Tuesday, the orchestra announced that she would be replaced by Deborah Voigt, who has risen to the top of the Metropolitan Opera's roster since last performing with the orchestra in 1995. Artist replacement came on the heels of venue replacement: Late last week, with a stagehands' strike threatening the Kimmel Center and Academy of Music, the orchestra moved to the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium.

In its season-opening production of Carmen , Opera Company of Philadelphia is preparing for its close-ups - on a 40-foot screen at Independence Mall. Eight cameras inside the Academy of Music on Friday will beam the opera eight blocks east. And since artists don't go into the opera profession because they don't like being noticed, the cast welcomes the technological invasion. "I love the concept of having a video camera on my face. You get much more detail," said mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham, who is singing the title role in her 30th Carmen production.

Flyers defenseman Chris Pronger is making so much progress that general manager Paul Holmgren expects him to be ready for the Oct. 6 opener in Boston. Speaking for the first time since he broke his shoulder and ribs in a bicycle accident Sept. 5, Holmgren said Pronger was "on track" to start the season with the team. "Physically, Chris is feeling better than even he thought he would," Holmgren said after the rookies went through the second day of prospect camp at the Skate Zone in Voorhees.

LINWOOD - The coach wanted things to be normal. Typical. Routine. He talked strategy in the pregame meeting. He told his players to stick to their habits. He told them to do what high school football players do on opening night - run on the field and pound each other on the shoulder pads, then line up and collide with the other kids in the different-colored uniforms. "It was all about football," Mainland coach Bob Coffey said of the team's season opener. Mainland lined up and played a tough, physical game against Hammonton in the Cape-Atlantic National Division game on a cool, clear Friday night before a huge crowd on the Mustangs' home field off Route 9. Hammonton won, 23-7, using a sturdy defense and its signature powerful ground game.