MRS. DALLOWAY SAID SHE WOULD BUY THE FLOWERS HERSELF…
The Metropolitan Opera presents the world-premiere production of The Hours, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham, and the Academy Award-winning film directed by Stephen Daldry and produced by Paramount Pictures. It is composed by Kevin Puts, a Pulitzer Prize winner himself in 2012 for his opera Silent NIght; with musical direction by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring a trio of divas Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, Joyce DiDonato, and a star-studded cast. For the official site click here.
An artistic challenge, the essence of the novel is on stage in a poetic libretto by Greg Pierce and and innovative production by English director Phelim McDermott (also responsible for Philip Glass´s Akhnaten and Satyagraha). One day and three stories bring into consonance in the lives of Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan living in different times and places, connecting simultaneously throughout the whole piece in a way only opera can do, that is why it is not the novel, it is not the film (both linear), it is The Hours the opera or three operas at the same time.
A contemporary opera work written for Renée Fleming by Kevin Puts, a composer with craft and masterful orchestrator, he provides new material and rich motives, there is lot of music, voices and a chorus harmonizing the atmosphere for contemporary issues like inner demons, mental health, fears, doubts, longing, hopes, gratitude, wifely and motherly duties, suicide visions, liberation and even ghostly presences.
I quote, René Fleming: “rarely an opera gets to play women that feel like people with real issues that women have”. Joyce DiDonato: ”the piece has the potential to evoke and compelling in all of us ,“ Yannick Nézet-Ségun: to work with living librettists and composers gives the chance for questions and answers and adaptations too, it is a gift.
The opera was commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera and The Philadelphia Orchestra, with thanks to Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Peter Gelb. The Hours is a profound experience as it is known by readers of the novel and fans of the movie, that is why the opera deserves to be heard, seen and felt.
The adaptation of The Hours has become the opera event of the year. PBS NewsHour.
Do not miss the opportunity! Achingly beautiful, The Hours are ticking… to question your sense of time, and always remember, people make the choices they need to make.
Live in HD in a theatre near you on December 10th, 2022. Find your theatre here
Review by José Mayorga , Guatemala, Central America lawyer and notary public, visual artist, and editor of El Azar Cultural, lives and works in Guatemala City. Cinema lover, curious about the possibilities life brings and eager to live the experience.
