SHORT TAKES : Radio City Revives Easter Show

Radio City Music Hall has revived its Easter show after an 11-year hiatus with Ziegfeld resplendence recalled by the legendary showman’s own designer, Erte.

Erte designed his first Ziegfeld Follies in 1923 and is now 97 years of age, but the years have not dimmed his genius for theatricality. His $5-million Easter Extravaganza, which opened Wednesday at Music Hall to run through April 23, is a blending of Art Deco style in sets and costumes with the Art Deco architecture of Music Hall.

Mayor David Dinkins welcomed the Easter show back on opening night as “one of New York’s most beloved traditions,” noting that it had been dropped in 1979 after 46 years when Radio City stopped being a movie house.

This pious pageant, culminating in 36 lily-carrying Rockettes disguised as nuns forming a floral cross, gets a lift from the Metropolitan Opera’s Marilyn Horne singing Anton Rubinstein’s “Kamenoi Ostrow” on tape.