The 2022-2023 season of live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera in New York gets underway this Saturday, Dec. 10 on WETA Classical’s Opera Matinee with the world-premiere staging, and broadcast premiere, of The Hours by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts. The opera, co-commissioned by the Met, is based on the award-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. It was then adapted into a 2002 Oscar-winning film.
The story depicts a single day in the lives of three 20th century women and writer Virginia Woolf, whose lives are connected to a character in Woolf’s novel, “Mrs. Dalloway”.
Puts has styled the music to represent each woman’s character and struggles, while a chiming clock signals the passage of each hour.
This Met production will be led by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and features three exceptional leads: soprano Renée Fleming, in her highly-anticipated return to the Met; soprano Kelli O’Hara; and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Virginia Woolf.
Renée Fleming initially proposed the idea to turn the movie into an opera. In her recent conversation with Met radio host Debra Lew Harder, she discusses the creative process in crafting the work, including the way voice and orchestra mirror each character.
In her separate conversation with Ms. Harder, Joyce DiDonato speaks about her collaboration with librettist Greg Pierce to shape the vocal and physical characteristics of Virginia Woolf, and the significance of certain words during Woolf’s era.
Join us for this broadcast on WETA Classical’s Opera Matinee, this Saturday, Dec. 10 at 1:00 p.m. (ET).
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