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

ART

Fruitful Cezanne: In a Sotheby’s auction in London Tuesday night, Paul Cezanne’s “Pewter Pitcher and Fruit” sold for a stunning $29.5 million, exceeding the $14.6 million to $19 million that had been expected. Considered to be one of the French impressionist’s best works, the painting, done between 1888 and 1890, had been stolen from its American owners in 1978, then recovered this year after an underwriter from Lloyds, which had been asked to insure it, brought his suspicions to the Art Loss Registry. The painting--an arrangement of apples, oranges and a lemon placed next to a pewter pitcher--went to an anonymous telephone bidder. In the same auction, 25 Picassos owned by the estate of murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace sold for nearly $18 million. They included an oil portrait of Picasso’s mistress Dora Maar and another of his daughter Maya. A spokesman for Sotheby’s declined to identify the buyers of Versace’s collection.

MOVIES

Smith’s ‘Twilight’ at Sundance: The film adaptation of Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman play about the 1992 L.A. riots, “Twilight: Los Angeles,” has been accepted into the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, taking place next month in Utah. The film--which is scheduled to be broadcast on PBS in an edition of the series “Stage of Screen”--interweaves Smith’s stage performance with news footage from 1992, along with a 1999 revision of “Twilight’s” real-life characters.

POP/ROCK

Celine Scores Again: Celine Dion’s “All the Way--A Decade of Song” is the No. 1 album in the nation for the second consecutive week, while holiday collections from Garth Brooks and Kenny G climbed into the Top 10. Dion’s album, which features seven new songs and a sampler of her greatest hits through the 1990s, sold 328,000 copies on the week and has surpassed 1 million in total sales since its release last month.

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Downloadable Latin Music: Miami-based Ritmoteca has announced the launch of the Internet’s largest online retailer of downloadable Latin music. It has exclusive digital rights to tens of thousands of Latin music tracks that can be downloaded from its Web site (Ritmotec.com) to a personal computer, MP3 player or other recording device. Ritmoteca was founded by Ivan J. Parron, who led the development of MTV Networks’ Latin America Web site.

STAGE

First ‘Witch’: Lucie Arnaz is the first of the “witches” to be officially cast in Cameron Mackintosh’s stage musical version of “The Witches of Eastwick,” scheduled to open in June in London. The show is based on the novel by John Updike and the subsequent 1987 film starring Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer.

QUICK TAKES

NBC announced Wednesday that talk-show host Maury Povich will host four one-hour broadcasts of its revival of “Twenty One,” a game show in which contestants can earn cash prizes totaling millions. It premieres Jan. 9 at 8 p.m., with additional telecasts scheduled for Jan. 12, Jan. 16 and Jan. 19. . . . Baritone Thomas Hampson’s two-day recital of the complete Mahler songs, Jan. 25-27 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, has been scaled back to just one appearance Jan. 25, and the program will be changed to a mixed repertory. . . . Musicians at the New York City Ballet ended their two-week strike Tuesday, allowing the orchestra to return to live duty at a performance of “The Nutcracker.”