Anniversaries are the opium of museums, publishers, theaters and opera houses. Fixing thei

r eyes on some round-number birth or death date of a major creator, they start planning to cash in years before. For 2006, birthdays are the winning numbers: Rembrandt's 400th; Mozart's 250th; and the 100th for Samuel Beckett and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The Dutch have organized a score of Rembrandt shows, starting appropriately with an exhibition based around his mother in the town of his birth, Leiden. Mozart's music will be heard more than usual in churches, concert hails and opera houses around the world, with his birthplace, Salzburg, once again trying to compensate for the indifference it showed him during his lifetime.

But do such anniversaries and accompanying celebrations serve much purpose？ Are they just marketing devices to sell tickets to museums and performances？ Or do they help draw the attention of younger generations to the giants of Western culture who at times seem crowded out by the pygmies of popular culture？

As it happens, the practice is not new. The birth of Bardolatry, or Shakespeare worship, is generally traced to the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was organized by the actor-manager David Garrick to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the playwright's birth (the jubilee was actually held in 1769, five years after the anniversary, but presumably time was more flexible in those days).

Until then, perhaps surprisingly, Shakespeare was not doing too well. The popularity of many of his plays did not survive the l8-year-long closure of London's theaters during the Civil War and Cromwell's rule. Then, after theaters reopened in 1660 with the Restoration of the monarchy, several of his major works -- "Richard Ⅲ" and "King Lear" among them -- were drastically revised by other playwrights.

Today, Mozart, for one, is hardly in need of revival. No opera house plans a season these days without including at least one of his stage masterpieces: "Le Nozze di Figaro", "Don Giovanni", "Cosi fan tutte" and "Die Zauberflote". His "Requiem", "Coronation Mass" and other sacred works are regularly performed. His instrumental works -- he wrote hundreds -- keep soloists and orchestras busy throughout the year.

A more interesting reflection for Jan. 27, the 250th anniversary of his birth, is: how would Western culture have fared without Mozart？

True, the same question might be asked of myriad great artists who have bequeathed beauty, emotion and understanding. Yet Mozart was unique, not only because he excelled in every kind of music (while, say, Verdi and Wagner were great composers only of opera), but also because, more even than Bach, he turned listening into a deeply personal experience.

There is that perennial: who killed Mozart？ In Peter Schaffer's 1979 play, "Amadeus", adapted as an Oscar-winning movie by Milos Forman in 1984, the finger of guilt was pointed at Mozart's contemporary, Antonio Salieri. But even that charge was old hat: Pushkin first raised it in his 1830 play, "Mozart and Salieri", which Rimsky-Korsakov adapted as an opera in 1897. Still, the question is again being trotted out for the anniversary.

No such mystery surrounds Rembrandt's life or death. But if his greatness was only fully recognized in the 19th century, he certainly is in need of no anniversary "special offers" to be admired today. His more than 600 oils are in collections around the world and, whenever selected for exhibitions, they draw huge crowds.

The organizers of Rembrandt 400, as the anniversary has been tagged, evidently again have crowds in mind, hoping that some 250,000 people will travel to the Netherlands for the occasion.

Will Rembrandt's fans cross paths with those of Mozart？

If they did, they might find that their idols have something in common. In his 75 or so self portraits, recording his passage from youth to old age, Rembrandt seems to offer a

A．Mozart's music used to be only played in church

B．Mozart's music has always been welcomed by people

C．Rembrandt once painted a lot about his mother

D．Rembrandt was brought up by his mother only