New York‘The Hours,” by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Greg Pierce , which had its world-premiere staged production at the Metropolitan Opera last Tuesday, is clever in concept.
Its sources—the 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham and the 2002 all-star film by Stephen Daldry —supply juicy roles for three women playing characters experiencing traumas in three separate eras, related through Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs.
Dalloway.” The structure of opera permits techniques of simultaneity and overlap that exist in no other medium.
From a marketing standpoint, the creation of “The Hours” was driven by soprano Renée Fleming , once the Met’s most beloved diva, whose 2017 “Der Rosenkavalier” at the house supposedly marked her retirement from staged opera.
On Tuesday, she returned in the role of Clarissa Vaughan, custom tailored for her voice.