The film depicts an elaborately stylized, gracefully executed minuet, with the performers wearing Baroque costumes not made of the usual silks and satins but of batik.

Although a keen sense of loss and longing also suffuses Mills's second novel, THE SAVAGE GARDEN (Putnam, $24.95), the youth of its protagonist and the thrill of his exploits as an amateur sleuth keep depression at bay in this romantic and gracefully executed literary puzzle.

But certainly these joint exertions of friends and enemies have forced many a poor fellow out of the common path of life and obliged him to make a trade of what can only be gracefully executed as an occasional avocation.

He began with an easygoing curtain-raiser, a stately, gracefully executed account of "Sheep May Safely Graze," from Bach's Cantata No. 208.

His collection stands with any in Europe as a model of well-thought-out, gracefully executed clothes.

A sign attached to the front sported an oversize photo of Upshaw in a tuxedo bending some woman in a white ball gown back in a gracefully executed dip.

I had seen deaf-mute talk before, but never executed so swiftly and gracefully.

Ornamentation was gracefully executed, the phrasing in slow movements was shapely and affecting, and the closing Gigue offered not only the fleetness one might expect, but also a few carefully considered and completely effective manipulations of texture.

The clearing of those psychological hurdles and erasing of the bad physical habits that resulted were not gracefully executed.

Korngold's opera is certainly not "Tristan und Isolde" or even "Moses und Aron," but operating on its own modest scale, it remains a gracefully executed piece of stagecraft.