ON THE BEAT.(Brief Article)

The Clintons march in triumph into the Met's Aida; a night to remember with Podles at Carnegie Hall; Millo and Zajick shine at Tucker gala

The Metropolitan Opera had two triumphal scenes on January 23: at a performance of Aida, BILL CLINTON showed up with his daughter, CHELSEA. They managed to sneak in unseen, but at the second intermission they were spotted and received a thunderous standing ovation. Afterward, they went backstage to congratulate the cast, which was quite a thrill for the evening's Amonasro, rising Met and New York City Opera star MARK DELAVAN. He described Clinton as "very ingenuous. He said how much he enjoyed it. Chelsea was very sweet. I thought about throwing in a joke and telling them, `I don't normally look like this,' but I don't think I had that much nerve. "The photos taken of the Clintons with Delavan and his Aida colleagues JAMES LEVlNE, DEBORAH VOIGT and LUCIANO PAVAROTTI (the Amneris, OLGA BORODINA, was evidently busy elsewhere) got around fast. "At the last show, I went to Debbie Voigt's dressing room to say goodbye, and she had a copy of the Kathmandu Post. It had a picture of us in it! It had gotten all the way to Nepal!" (My question: does Deborah Voigt subscribe to the Kathmandu Post?)

This month, Delavan returns to New York City Opera as Horace Tabor in the company's new production of The Ballad of Baby Doe. "I think Horace is one of the most interesting characters in Western lore. He was a rags-to-riches-to rags guy. He made a mint on silver, but he was also a goof! He would buy all this stuff on credit and got mortgaged to the hilt. When the country threw out the silver standard and went to the gold standard, he was buried. When he met Baby Doe, he fell head over heels for her, and he became a romantic. He wrote her poetry and letters. The opera admittedly romanticizes the relationship, and if you go to Leadville today, there are still people who will call Baby Doe `that little blonde tramp. `They're that bitter! There's still the Augusta camp and the Baby camp, which is really interesting. It's a little like Southerners who still refer to the Civil War as `the Northern Aggression.'"

This fall, Delavan will star in New York City Opera's new production of Der Fliegende Hollander. There's also some talk of Salome and Il Trittico down the road.

On January 31 at Carnegie Hall, a Moscow Chamber Orchestra concert with EWA PODLES as ...