Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

TELEVISION

‘Odyssey’ Rules the Night: NBC’s “The Odyssey” delivered fairly epic numbers Sunday, attracting 28% of the audience in the big cities metered by Nielsen Media Research--prime time’s highest movie rating since NBC’s February telecast of “Schindler’s List.” The network’s 3-D “3rd Rock From the Sun” also performed extremely well (21% of the 8 p.m. audience, its highest this year), as did the season finale of Fox’s “The X-Files” (20% of the 9 p.m. audience). And for those who tuned in, yes, series star David Duchovny will be back next season, despite the apparent death of his character, Fox Mulder.

Casting Call: Former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden has landed a co-starring role in “One Hot Summer Night,” a murder mystery for ABC in which he plays a bad cop. . . . Lance Henriksen, who tracks down serial killers in Fox’s “Millennium,” will star as Abraham Lincoln in TNT’s “The Day Lincoln Was Shot.” Rob Morrow, the former star of “Northern Exposure,” will play John Wilkes Booth.

STAGE

N.Y. Critics Picks: “The Life” was named New York’s best new musical in the Drama Desk awards, presented Sunday, while the off-Broadway “How I Learned to Drive” was named best play. “Chicago” and “A Doll’s House” won best revival honors, with “Chicago” winning six awards, more than any other production.

THE ARTS

Met Gets Chinese Treasures: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been promised 11 major Chinese paintings from the renowned C.C. Wang collection for its renovated galleries of Chinese art, the New York Times reported. The gift by Oscar Tang, a private investment manager who is a Met trustee, includes a rare, 10th century silk scroll that predates all the hanging scrolls in China. The museum’s director, Philippe de Montebello, said the donation is one of the most important ever made to the institution. It gives the Metropolitan one of the most illustrious collections of Chinese paintings outside China.

POP/ROCK

Price Is Right: Anyone buying Toad the Wet Sprocket’s new album, “Coil,” today at Tower Records stores in L.A. and Orange counties, will receive a bonus: a free ticket to the Santa Barbara band’s June 6 show at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. The free concert is part of the group’s “Fan Appreciation Tour.”

PEOPLE

Stallone, Flavin Wed: Actor Sylvester Stallone, 50, confirmed Monday that he and model Jennifer Flavin, 28, the mother of his daughter, were married Saturday in London. It’s his third marriage. “I have had two great things happen to me in the past year: the birth of our beautiful daughter, Sophia Rose, and now my marriage to Jennifer, who is a great mother and I know will be a wonderful wife,” Stallone said in a statement.

QUICK TAKES

Bush, En Vogue and Jewel are scheduled to perform on “The 1997 MTV Movie Awards,” which will be taped June 7 at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. . . . Starting today, orchestra enthusiasts will have a new way to support the arts: the Los Angeles Philharmonic Visa card. A portion of the card’s proceeds will benefit the orchestra’s activities. . . . An ashtray from the bedroom where Marilyn Monroe was found dead sold for $4,000, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s jacket from his second “Terminator” movie went for $40,000 and a baseball autographed by all four Beatles fetched $7,500 at an auction Sunday at the Pacific Design Center. . . . Police in Modena, Italy, who are investigating an arson fire at a farmhouse owned by Luciano Pavarotti, are not ruling out vandalism but are leaning toward the hypothesis that the fire was meant as some sort of undisclosed warning, Italian newspapers reported.