About the work
The Hours is an opera in two acts by Kevin Puts with a libretto by Greg Pierce, based on Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel and its 2002 film adaptation. A concert version was presented on 18 March 2022 in Philadelphia; the staged world premiere followed on 22 November 2022 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and directed by Phelim McDermott.
Plot
The opera interweaves a single day in the lives of three women from different decades: New York editor Clarissa Vaughan, preparing a party for a dying friend in 1999; writer Virginia Woolf, beginning her novel 'Mrs Dalloway' in Richmond in 1923; and pregnant housewife Laura Brown in 1949 Los Angeles. Allusions to Woolf's novel link the three storylines.
Cultural significance
Puts gives each woman a distinct musical idiom – spare for Woolf, light and pop-inflected for the suburban world around Laura, richer for Clarissa. Joyce DiDonato, Renée Fleming and Kelli O'Hara in the three lead roles drew particular critical praise; the cast's performance was released on a 2024 recording on Erato.