It took me quite some time to catch up with Kevin Puts’ two-act opera The Hours. I missed out on seeing it in a movie theatre in 2022, in the relatively early days of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series. Fortunately, that broadcast was saved on video and was added to Great Performances at the Met on Public Television this past March 15. It was broadcast on KQED on March 20, and it was saved in my xfinity list of recordings.
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Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming, and Kelli O’Hara as three women from three different eras (screenshot from the PBS broadcast of The Hours)
This morning was not a busy one, nor have things been particularly busy since lunch. As a result, I finally had time to view the opera in its entirety. For those that do not already know, The Hours is the title of a novel written by Michael Cunningham in 1998, which was then adapted as a film in 2002. The Wikipedia page for the opera describes the narrative as “a single day in the lives of three women.” One of those women is not fictitious, the novelist Virginia Woolf, sung by mezzo Joyce DiDonato at the Met debut. Soprano Renée Fleming sang the role of contemporary book editor, Clarissa Vaughan; and soprano Kelli O’Hara sang the third woman, Laura Brown, married to her husband Dan, bass-baritone Brandon Cedel. Their son Richie was sung by boy soprano Kai Edgar.
The narrative is rather unconventional, because all three of the women are living in different times in the twentieth century: Woolf in 1923 (when she may have begun her work on Mrs Dalloway), Brown in 1949 (not long after the end of World War II), and Vaughan in 1999, when there was a fair amount of artistry going on in New York’s West Village. Greg Pierce prepared the libretto based on Cunningham’s text, and Kevin Puts set that libretto to music. An excerpt from this opera was most recently heard in San Francisco in November of 2024, when it was included in the annual The Future Is Now concert, which showcases the rising talents of San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows.
Sadly, I was not at that performance; so my television version was my first encounter with the opera. Fortunately, I was not a total stranger to Puts’ music. My latest contact was not my only one; but in reviewing my archives, I had to reach back May of 2024, when violinist Joshua Bell played “Earth,” which Puts had composed in 2023.
I suppose what mattered most about my Met experience was that I wanted to view it from beginning to end to see what would happen. I was intrigued with the idea of interleaving different characters from different time periods. Nevertheless, this never came across as an impediment for making sense of the overall narrative. I must confess that the music was not particularly memorable; but, on the other hand, it never tried to upstage both the narrative and Stephen Daldry’s approach to staging it. As a result, I was never tempted to close my eyes and just enjoy the vocalists!
Should San Francisco Opera decide to add The Hours to its repertoire, I would have no trouble visiting this opera for a second time!
