Aix En Provence France

It was seven when I left my room at the Hotel Mercure-Paul Cezanne to breakfast on the morning light. Along stone streets built for horses and carriages, the sun showered through the branches of centenarian plane trees and blushed the stone of 17th and 18th century mansions. Even by Southern California standards, the light in Aix-en-Provence is wondrous. That morning, the sky turned as iridescent as the inside of an abalone shell.

It was seven when I left my room at the Hotel Mercure-Paul Cezanne to breakfast on the morning light. Along stone streets built for horses and carriages, the sun showered through the branches of centenarian plane trees and blushed the stone of 17th and 18th century mansions. Even by Southern California standards, the light in Aix-en-Provence is wondrous. That morning, the sky turned as iridescent as the inside of an abalone shell.

Milan's La Scala theater, trying to end the turmoil that led to conductor Riccardo Muti's resignation, named the director of the opera festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, to be its top administrator and artistic director Thursday. Stephane Lissner is replacing embattled superintendent Mauro Meli and will take over next month, said a statement from Milan Mayor Gabriele Albertini, who is also president of the private foundation that controls La Scala.

A collaboration between superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Mark Morris Dance Group will highlight the 1998-99 Contemporary Dance Series presented by the Irvine Barclay Theatre. For the first time, the theater also will offer two or more performances of each company it presents. The season: * Oct. 6-7: Ballet Preljocaj from Aix-en-Provence, France. Company founder Angelin Preljocaj's "Le Spectre de la Rose," based upon the Fokine ballet of the same name, among other works.

There are architects whose work exists only on paper. Then there is Shigeru Ban. The architect (pronounced she-gay-roo-BAHN ) has gained fame partly from work made of paper. The new Rizzoli book "Shigeru Ban: Paper in Architecture," edited by Ian Luna and Lauren A. Gould with essays by Riichi Miyake, shows how Ban has brought new meaning to architecture with his use of recycled cardboard paper tubes. "Paper is made out of trees," Ban says. "Humans create architecture out of trees, so it must be possible to create architecture out of paper."

Hungarian-born abstract artist Viktor Vasarely has opened a Budapest museum housing more than 500 works given by him to the country he left 57 years ago. The Vasarely museum, set up in a wing of Budapest's 18th-Century Zichy palace, traces the artist's stylistic development through to the rippling geometric patterns and optical illusions that are his trademark.

John McEnroe defeated Guillermo Perez-Roldan, and Andre Agassi beat Martin Jaite Friday to give the United States a 2-0 lead over Argentina in the American Zone final of the Davis Cup at Buenos Aires. McEnroe outlasted the 18-year-old Perez-Roldan, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, in a four-hour match, and the 18-year-old Agassi, the world's fifth-ranked player, defeated Jaite, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1.

Derrick Rostagno upset second-seeded Brad Gilbert, 6-4, 6-3, Thursday to move into the quarterfinals of the $232,050 D.C. hard-court tennis tournament at Washington. Rostagno broke Gilbert's serve to take the first set, and with the second set at 3-3, he won the last three games to close out the match. "I didn't serve as well as I would have liked to," said Gilbert, ranked No. 9 in the world. "He was capitalizing on my second serve."

Herbert Wernicke, a German avant-garde opera designer whose productions appeared in major theaters across Europe, has died. He was 56. Wernicke died Tuesday in Basel, where he was working on the set for Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt" at the city's main theater. The cause of death was not given. The Austrian newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten reported that Wernicke collapsed in the street and could not be revived.

MOVIES It's Deja Vu All Over Again Fox Searchlight is joining Columbia Pictures in the doghouse, caught in the act of using an employee in a 1998 testimonial ad. According to Daily Variety, Caren Lipson, then-executive assistant to Fox Searchlight's vice president of creative advertising, was cast in a commercial for "Waking Ned Divine." Posing with her "date," she called the film "hysterical." Studio higher-ups point out that "Waking Ned Devine" was released under a previous regime.

Quite apart from its other achievements, Angelin Preljocaj's "Paysage Apres la Bataille" (Landscape After the Battle) is arguably the most remarkable rock ballet ever choreographed: a spectacular ensemble showpiece that depicts dysfunctional relationships with the pitiless dexterity of Twyla Tharp's "Short Stories" or William Forsythe's "Love Songs," and then evolves over its unbroken 70 minutes into a sardonic neo-Expressionist action painting of Western culture at the end of the so-called