2010 Spoleto embraces renovated SC theater

2010 Spoleto embraces renovated SC theater

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Spoleto Festival USA will celebrate the reopening of a nearly 300-year-old theater with a production that was the first opera performed in the American colonies.

Charleston’s Dock Street Theatre should be ready to open by the time the two-week festival begins May 28 after three years of renovations. The original theater on the site opened in 1736.

The organizers of the 34th annual arts festival in South Carolina plan several high profile evens for the restored facility, including a new production of the 18th-century English ballad opera “Flora.” The show became the first opera performed in the colonies in Charleston in 1735.

Nazi resister dies at 98

NORWICH, Vt. — Freya von Moltke, a former Nazi resister who made her home in Vermont, has died at age 98.

Her son, Helmuth von Moltke, told the Valley News that his German-born mother died Friday after suffering a viral infection earlier in the week.

Freya von Moltke served with her husband as prominent members of the German resistance during World War II. Born into a banking family in 1911, Freya Deichmann met her future husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, at age 18 and married in 1931.

The couple both received law degrees, and Helmuth von Moltke set up a law practice in Berlin as Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. The von Moltkes were vocal in their opposition to Nazism.Freya von Moltke came to Vermont to live in 1960.

Critics pick ‘Hurt Locker’

NEW YORK — The National Society of Film Critics has selected “The Hurt Locker” as the best picture of 2009 at a meeting in New York City.

The movie about an elite Army bomb squad unit in Iraq also drew top honors for director Kathryn Bigelow and actor Jeremy Renner during Sunday’s voting.

The society chose Yolande Moreau as best actress for her performance in “Seraphine,” a French film about the painter Seraphine de Senlis.

Joel and Ethan Coen won best screenplay for “A Serious Man,” while “The Beaches of Agnes 40” was selected as the best nonfiction film.

Forty-six of the society’s 64 members voted.The society often picks foreign films or critics’ darlings. Rarely do the selections mirror the Academy Awards, which are set for March 7.

Journalist’s death probed

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Police in New Zealand say former Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell may have been crossing a highway to take a photograph when she stepped in front of a car and was killed.

Detective Sgt. John Hamilton of the Blenheim police says a full investigation is under way and will take some time.

He says that based on witness statements so far, it appears Howell was crossing the highway to take a picture when she stepped in front of a car in the far lane. Hamilton says it’s possible she was “completely unaware of the vehicle.”

Drivers in New Zealand travel on the left side of the road, not the right side as in the United States, so pedestrians must look first in the direction opposite from what they normally would. The 68-year-old Howell died Friday.

Today’s birthdays

Actress Barbara Rush (“Peyton Place”) is 83. Actress Dyan Cannon is 73. Country singer Patty Loveless is 53. Singer Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is 50. Actor Dave Foley (“NewsRadio,” “Kids in the Hall”) is 47. Actress Julia Ormond is 45. Country singer Deana Carter is 44. Harmonica player Benjamin Darvill of Crash Test Dummies is 43. Actor Jeremy Licht (“Valerie”) is 39. Actress Jill Marie Jones (“Girlfriends”) is 35.