ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

TELEVISION

A&E; Turns the Tables With ‘Benedict Arnold’

While lots of programmers have been focusing on heroes since the events of Sept. 11, cable’s A&E; Network is taking a different tack with “Traitor: Benedict Arnold.”

The TV movie is filming in Ireland, with Aidan Quinn as the famed American turncoat and Kelsey Grammer as his commander in the Revolutionary Army, Gen. George Washington.

Also in the works for A&E;’s 2002-03 schedule are a six-hour drama about Napoleon, starring Gerard Depardieu, John Malkovich, Christian Clavier and Isabella Rossellini, and “The Lost World,” an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur tale starring Bob Hoskins and Peter Falk.

THE ARTS

Pianist Need Not Be Present to Win

Minnesota’s Twin Cities’ International Piano-e-Competition, to be held June 6 through 14, is billed as a first for a “serious” piano contest. All the performers and two of the judges--pianists Yefim Bronfman and Emanual Ax--will be participating long distance.

The brainchild of University of Minnesota music professor Alexander Braginsky and Jeffrey Wirth, owner of Minneapolis’ Grand Hotel, the contest will rely on the Yamaha Disklavier, a digital acoustic piano. Created in the mid-1980s, the machine captures the speed of the fingering, the timing of the foot-pumps, even how crisply the musicians lift their fingers off the keys.

Sixty aspiring concert pianists will have their music saved on floppy diskettes to be re-created on the piano, as judges from seven countries look on.

Images of each performer, transmitted through cyberspace, will be simultaneously displayed on a large digital monitor.

Bronfman and Ax will assess the performance via the Web rather than from Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall.

Although Internet duets featuring players in different cities have occurred before, no formal competitions have exploited the technology, a spokesman for Yamaha’s piano division said.

Scarlett Must Dance on Another Day

“Tomorrow is another day.” So said Scarlett O’Hara and so says the Atlanta Ballet about a dance version of her story. The company had planned to create a new work based on “Gone With the Wind” for its 75th-anniversary season in 2005 but has had to shelve the notion indefinitely because of financial problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“The financial commitment is very high, and it is not judicious to launch an endeavor of this scope,” said Sam Moss, board chairman of the ballet company, which is trying to reduce its debt and balance its budget.

Waiter Confesses: He Stole 239 Art Treasures

A 31-year-old French waiter has confessed to stealing 239 art treasures from 172 museums and antique shops in seven European countries, prosecutors say.

Stephane Breitwieser, who was arrested in Switzerland last November, told police his six-year spree was motivated by a love of art rather than avarice, a public prosecutor, Emil Birchler, was quoted as saying in the Guardian, a London newspaper.

His take included more than 60 canvases from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, including works by Watteau and Breughel, that are said to have been destroyed by his mother, Mireille. She told French police that, shortly after her son was arrested, she cut them up and threw them into the garbage because “the house absolutely had to be wiped clean.”

The items, stolen in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Austria, were taken from small museums where security was lax. According to prosecutors, it was unclear how much they were worth because only 10% of the owners have come forward.

QUICK TAKES

Soprano Kathleen Battle, actress-singer Bernadette Peters and songwriter Randy Newman will be inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame on June 28.... Despite a Tony Award nomination for its star, Billy Crudup, the Broadway revival of “The Elephant Man” will close June 9 after a run of only 65 performances, far fewer then the 900-plus chalked up by the 1979 original.... Michael Douglas, Halle Berry, Jodie Foster and Mike Myers are among the celebrities attending Paramount Pictures’ 90th-anniversary gala on July 14. Annie Leibovitz will take a group photo in front of the legendary studio gates for the October issue of Vanity Fair.... CBS has given the go-ahead to “The Battle of Mary Kay,” a comedy about cosmetics magnate Mary Kay Ash, who died in November. Shirley MacLaine will star.... Annette Bening will take on her first big-screen role in two years, playing a widowed mother in a Disney remake of the 1976 movie “Freaky Friday,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.... Harrison Ford has agreed to star in Universal Pictures’ big-screen adaptation of Lawrence Block’s “A Walk Among the Tombstones” for Jersey Films, about a recovering-alcoholic private eye.

Elaine Dutka