Lincoln Center's Big Bash

Viewed from Broadway, it looked like Mount Rushmore in Manhattan. Joan Sutherland's face was almost 70 ft. high. Leonard Bernstein's baton was as big as a flagpole, and Baryshnikov finally stood as tall as his talent. The giant figures were all performing on an enormous screen that covered the facade of the Metropolitan Opera House. The innovative sound-and-light spectacle marked the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Put together by Bob Gill and Robert Rabinowitz, the pair that helped create Beatlemania, Lincoln Center's 30-minute son et lumiere is an outsized history of the six-building performing arts complex, from its groundbreaking in May 1959, through its shaky early years, to its reasonably tranquil present. The movie, which will run through Labor Day, may not be the best show in New York City, but it is indisputably the biggest and one of the most pleasant.

The opening night black-tie audience loved it and went on to have one of the season's best parties in the center's theaters. A storm threatened, the food was forgettable, but the anniversary bash, like Lincoln Center itself, managed to work. President John Mazzola, a proud host, saw it as a symbol. "New York is the cultural capital of the world, and this celebration underlines that in gold."

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