The hours fly by at the Metropolitan Opera

I was confounded. I thought this daring opera take on the Michael Cunningham book and the 2002 film starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman would be a tedious rehash. A trilogy of women in different times linked only by Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dallaway, heading towards, or encountering suicide, only a sing-along this time, did not bode well for an engaging evening. What could the medium of opera add to the deeply troubling film? Plenty, as it turned out.

To parody the opening line of Mrs Dalloway, soprano Renée Fleming had decided to commission the opera herself. With three principals in mind – mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato and soprano Kelli O’Hara and, herself – Fleming put the idea of staging a piece set in three different time periods, but thematically linked – to American composer, Kevin Puts.

They had previously collaborated on a glittering orchestral song cycle, The Brightness of Light – based on the letters of artist Georgia O’Keefe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz. What next? “Something like The Hours”, said Fleming. Bullseye.

The good fairy, Serendipity, rode into battle. The natural choice of composer for the opera should have been Philip Glass. He wrote the score for the film. The sound world was terrific, as background music. Glass’ repetitive, minimalist style was evocative and did not get in the way. Although, it did not change in character throughout the film. Puts was a much better, and more lyrically inclined candidate.

Portraying three very different women in different periods and locations, 1920’s suburban England, 1940’s Hollywood and sharp elbowed 1990s Manhattan in the immediacy of onstage performance called for a clear divergence in musical idiom. Puts delivered. Bringing all three characters together in the closing trio of the opera – the only real departure from the film portrayal, in which they never encountered each other – was a stroke of dramatic genius. It offered closure.

Next, Serendipity waved his/her/its wand over the cast. Fleming and DiDonato need no introduction. Nor does Kelli O’Hara if you are a Broadway fan. She is less familiar to opera goers. Like the occasional aligning of the planets, having all three superstars onstage, as equally important characters in a work built round them and suited to their singing styles, was a spectacle in its own right.

I doubt if any other combination could have pulled this off. Or ever shall. Fleming, DiDonato and O’Hara will forever be synonymous with The Hours. Only the three leading American divas of the day could make this work.

DiDonato portrays author, Virginia Woolf, in the process of creating Mrs Dalloway, her novel in which the action spans a single day, like the opera. O’Hara is Laura Brown, a 1940’s housewife, trapped in a comfortable suburban existence where the most important task is baking a cake for her husband’s birthday, yearning for more from life. Fleming plays Clarissa Vaughan, a superwoman New York literary editor, focused on mounting a party for her previous lover, a writer dying of AIDS.

Act I

The plot begins with the chorus, representing Virginia’s inner thoughts, as she tinkers with the opening line of the novel she’s working on, Mrs. Dalloway: “Mrs Dalloway decided to buy the flowers herself”.

Phelim McDermott, the producer, devised a set where each character’s setting seamlessly slid front of stage as the action shifted, allowing a continuous flow of action.

We move to Clarissa and her partner Sally, preparing their West Village apartment for a party celebrating Clarissa’s lifelong friend and former lover, Richard, a writer who is dying of AIDS. He has just won a literary award. Sally doubts Richard will be well enough to attend, but Clarissa refuses to accept the dire state of Richard’s health.

Clarissa, staving off anxiety about Richard, sets out to buy flowers for the party. A Mrs Dalloway reference. She delights in the wonders of Washington Square and is intrigued by the otherworldly singing of the Man Under the Arch. She runs into Walter, a writer who shares Sally’s doubts about whether Richard will be well enough for his party.

Virginia has just woken up and entered her studio, anxious about beginning her new novel. As she watches her husband, Leonard edit proofs, she reflects on the many roles he plays in her life.

Clarissa enters the flower shop, and Barbara the florist greets her with a kiss. Clarissa escapes into a momentary fantasy in which Barbara is her lover and they never have to leave the shop. She finds the perfect flowers and heads off to check on Richard. Clarissa is a bit of a busybody. Mrs Fusspot.

In her studio, Virginia finds it hard to start work on her novel. She is distracted by thoughts of London and its bustle, contrasting these visions with the lifeless suburbs of Richmond. She has been confined to Richmond because of her mental state. Despite her fears about succumbing to depression, she starts to write, and the words flow.

In Los Angeles, we encounter Laura Brown in her bed, reading the sentences from Mrs. Dalloway that Virginia is writing. Laura dreads facing her wifely and motherly duties, since today is her husband Dan’s birthday and her young son Richie is waiting for her downstairs. She staves off her anxiety by turning back to Mrs. Dalloway.

Laura enters her kitchen to find her annoyingly energetic husband Dan and six-year-old Richie concerned about her. She tries to convince them she is fine, but internally agonises about her fears and insecurities. Dan, typically unaware of the severity of her struggles, goes off to work.

Clarissa is irritated by Sally’s doubts about Richard’s health and wonders whether Sally is the best match for her. Virginia realizes that a character in her novel must die but she isn’t sure who. Laura struggles with the task of baking the birthday cake with Richie while managing her anxiety. Her incompetence as a housewife is reflected in the great cake disaster that ensues. Binned!

On her way to Richard’s, Clarissa stops at the corner where, years ago, she ended their youthful, intense romantic relationship, breaking it off using a cruel phrase she now regrets. She reflects on how one sentence can change the course of a life. Puts gives her a wonderful aria On This Corner, whose theme is woven through the opera.

Clarissa arrives at Richard’s apartment to make sure he remembers the party. Richard, a disaster, frail, forgetful, emaciated AIDS victim, tells her he can’t face the party, but she snaps at him, lecturing him he needs to try harder. He confides in her that sometimes he still imagines them as lovers.

In Laura’s kitchen, her anxiety escalates as she persists in trying to bake the cake with Richie. Virginia asks her cook, Nelly, whether she believes that a young woman could start off the day joyfully and then decide to kill herself. This leads Virginia into a suicidal fantasy foreshadowing the way she’ll eventually end her own life in the Thames, her pockets laden with stones.

Laura’s neighbor Kitty visits and tells Laura that she might have cancer. Laura escapes into a romantic fantasy about Kitty. Snapping out of it, she finds herself kissing Kitty as she consoles her. Virginia, now too anxious to write, decides to head out into the world, to escape the restrictions Leonard has imposed on her.

Clarissa returns home to find Sally busily preparing for the party, focused on practical concerns about seating. Clarissa has a gnawing presentiment that something’s terribly wrong with Richard and heads back toward his apartment.

Virginia, seized with a need to escape, is unsure whether she should take the train to London or end her life in the river. Laura feels a desperate need to run away from her suffocating home life and drops off Richie with a sitter, driving toward Pasadena, not knowing where she’ll end up. The three women are united in their need to escape and in their terror of what they might find, if they succeed.

Act II

Laura has found herself on a bed in an otherworldly hotel room, armed with a bottle of pills and Mrs. Dalloway. She doesn’t know why she’s there or what she’ll do now.  Kill herself or read her book? She tries to piece together the last hour, remembering a surreal, romantic interaction with the Hotel Clerk.

Laura reads Mrs. Dalloway, conjuring up the author, who is seen approaching the river—perhaps to commit kill herself? Laura also contemplates suicide. Virginia is momentarily distracted by the voice of the Man Under the Arch. His is a timely warning voice – a sort of vox ex machina. God knows who he really is. Some unconscious voice in the head, perhaps?

Leonard arrives and tells Virginia he was convinced that this time he’d find her dead, and he’d have to tell her sister Vanessa that he had failed. Virginia is moved by the depth of his concern.

Clarissa is heading back to Richard’s when she overhears a church choir rehearsing. Their lyrics seem written for her. Outside Richard’s apartment, she finds Louis, Richard’s ex-boyfriend, who is debating whether or not to visit him. He recalls the formative summer that the three of them spent in Wellfleet, triggering a flashback depicting the delirious closeness Clarissa and Richard once shared, a closeness that excluded Louis.

Virginia, back in her study, hears children’s voices and wonders if she’s losing her mind. She goes out to her garden to find her sister Vanessa and her three children holding a funeral service for a dying bird. As Virginia manically makes a grave for the bird, Vanessa realizes the severity of her sister’s illness.

In the hotel room, Laura castigates herself for considering suicide when she has a young child and another one on the way. She is determined to stay alive and to face her motherly duties.

Clarissa enters Richard’s apartment to find him standing on his window ledge. She is terrified, but he seems to finally be at peace. As she tries to convince him to step down, he explains that all he wanted was to write something good, something that might touch someone. He tells Clarissa he loves her and steps out of the window, falling to his death on the street below.

As Clarissa races down to Richard’s broken body, the chorus becomes her short-circuiting psyche, reassembling images and words from the day. Laura brings herself to leave the hotel and drives down the Pasadena Freeway. Virginia, at the bird grave, realizes her sanity is slipping. All three women seem to be drowning.

Laura picks up Richie at the home of the sitter, Mrs. Latch. Richie tells his mother he was scared that she was gone because she had something “growing inside her,” which is what he heard Kitty say. Pregnancy associated with cancer.

At the Woolf’s dining table, Virginia thanks Leonard for the happiness he has given her. Dan comes home to his birthday celebration and expresses how happy his family has made him. Richard’s friends gather at his party, now his wake. Sally tries to convince Clarissa she did everything she could for him.

Clarissa realizes that her failure to acknowledge Richard’s dire physical and mental state might have contributed to his death. Richard’s mother, who turns out to be Laura, arrives at the party and tries to express regret about her failures as a mother.

This is one of the sharpest theatrical moments of the opera. Laura ages onstage in a rapid costume change and appears in Clarissa’s space. Her son, Richie is in fact Clarissa’s Richard. Laura did not commit suicide but abandoned her husband and family. Richard is the damaged goods she left behind.

As the others recede, Clarissa, Laura, and Virginia find themselves in a space that transcends time and place, where they can finally perceive each other. They are astonished that all along, as they traveled through their days feeling alone, there were others who felt the same way, influencing and being influenced in ways that they couldn’t possibly understand.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Music Director, conducted. He delivered Puts’ complex score sensitively. Virginia’s music is spare, almost Baroque. Laura’s is Holyrood glossy, sweeping Henry Mancini-like strings. Clarissa gets the sharp post minimalist treatment.

Then the score comes together for the final ensemble. It is heart rending as the three women share their sorrow, but then extend an olive branch of hope. “Here is the world, and you live in it, and you try to be…” What? Touchingly left unsaid. The genius is in the trying.

True to her slightly fustian brown Virginia Woolf depiction, DiDonato left her hands firmly planted in her cardigan pockets until the end. No action of DiDonato’s is without purpose. Even the ray of hope in the trio was undermined by the reminder of those pockets that would, one day, be laden with stones. Mrs Woolf had clearly decided to go down to the river herself.

Not for the faint hearted, I thought the opera version of The Hours as intense a two hours of emotional turmoil as I have ever encountered onstage. Not everyone’s idea of a good night out. But I was transfixed by the voices. The Met’s landmark production of the 22/23 season so far.

And Another Thing!

Hot off the press. English National Opera (ENO), although not unslung from its Arts Council funding withdrawal hook, has been thrown a lifeline.

The company has been given time to regroup, come up with fresh plans to restructure and been guaranteed interim funding.

Hats off to chairman, Harry Brunjes, chief executive Stuart Murphy and artistic director Annilese, for mounting a hard hitting, but well-argued campaign, persuading all and sundry of the merits of ENO’s case. War not over yet, but a battle won. A good start to 2023.

I can’t wait to see the company’s new production of Wagner’s The Rhinegold and Miskimmon’s very own production of Korngold’s The Dead City. Simply mentioning these two challenging works underscores the quality of the work ENO is bringing to the operatic stage.  

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