The Metropolitan Opera telecast Kevin Puts new opera The Hours around the world this afternoon. The company gave the work its world premiere last month. The libretto by Greg Pierce is based on the novel by Michael Cunningham and the subsequent film. It depicts a day in the life of three desperately unhappy women -the novelist Virginia Woolf, and two fictional characters – Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan. The suicidal Woolf is writing Mrs Galloway in 1923. Laura is unhappily married with a son and a baby on the way. Her time frame is the fifties. Clarissa is trying to get her friend Richard to attend a party in his honor during the nineties. He is understandably depressed as he’s dying of AIDS. Richard calls Clarissa Mrs Galloway, the first name of Woolf’s eponymous protagonist. Virtually everyone in the opera except Leonard Woolf is homosexual. Whether there’s a connection is not specified. Leonard prevents Virginia from self annihilation – she succeeded 18 years later. Laura checks into a hotel to take pills, but changes her mind. Richard with Clarissa in the room jumps out of his apartment window turning the party that was to honor him for a writing award into a wake. Laura shows up and is revealed to be Richard’s mother. She also confesses to deserting her family. It’s not a happy tale. Nobody seems to have a good reason for living – or for dying, for that matter. Existential angst is the dominant theme of the work.
The action spans two acts with episodes involving the three women interposed and even occurring simultaneously. Philip Glass wrote the score for the film version of this sad story. Puts does his best to try to avoid Glass’s repetitive style. For the most part he succeeds, but every now and then a little bit of Glass tinkles through. Puts’ music is very interesting. Its level of sophistication is above that of the recent new operas mounted by the Met. Most of the musical interest is in the orchestra which is richly scored. The second act is much better than the first. The finale of the first act is powerful, though today’s rendering of it lacked the impact that it had on the performance of Dec 7 which was broadcast on the Sirius Met channel. Almost all the lyricism present in the work, I’m not comparing Puts to Strauss or Puccini, is in Act 2. It take a lot of chutzpah to end an opera with a trio for two sopranos and a mezzo raising the inevitable spectre of Strauss’s transcendent trio near the end of Der Rosenkavalier. But Puts’ trio is fine if you can suspend your memory of the earlier one. Compared to the contemporary competition The Hours is quite good. The opera does have its soporific moments, but they are all in the first act.
The Met has done a spectacular job of staging the opera. Different parts of the stage serve as the scenes of the ever shifting temporal settings of the work. The fifties era kitchen looks spot on as do the sets for the Virginia and Clarissa stories. The scenery changes in tune with the score and is effortlessly moved by the Met’s outstanding technical resources. Ballet is typically an embarrassment in opera. There were a gaggle of dancers circling the action for no purpose I could discern, but they were not an embarrassment.
Obviously, the focus of the story is the three women. All three were outstanding. Renée Fleming, who stimulated Puts to write the opera, still has a luminous soprano. She could easily continue to appear on the opera stage despite her retirement from staged opera in 2017. Her singing was on point throughout the afternoon.
Kelli O’Hara as Laura is mostly a broadway performer, but has an operatically trained voice and easily kept up with her two co-stars. Her duet with Virginia was powerfully rendered.
Joyce DiDonato was Virginia. Clad in drab clothes and made up to be dowdy and pushing 60, the mezzo gave a fine reading of the author in search on an exit. Her appearance is in sharp contradistinction to the real Woolf who was only 41 in 1923 and was also very attractive. There was a brief moment of vocal insecurity in the second act, but she was otherwise outstanding.
The cast, listed below, is very large. All were up to their tasks. Particularly notable was the work of 11 year old Kai Edgar as Richie the boy who grew up to be Richard. He was sung by Kyle Ketelsen. The Man Under the Arch was sung as a vocalise by countertenor John Holiday; he was a too obvious symbol of death. He even took Richard’s body away after his fatal plunge. Kathleen Kim did a sly riff on the Queen of the Night’s aria. There were no weakness among the entire cast.
The chorus has a very big part in this opera – both onstage and off. Puts has written fine and emphatic music for the chorus which they delivered with elan and dispatch. A bravura performance for the Met’s brilliant ensemble. The same was true for the company’s equally brilliant orchestra. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin got a nuanced and compelling sound from his players. Nézet-Séguin was intimately involved in both the composition and preparation for the staging of this opera. His presence from the work’s beginning to today showed in the final product.
Gary Halvorson’s video direction was awful. His addiction to extreme closeups was in full relapse. This predilection had two bad effects. The action often spread across the Met’s large stage was censored and the closeups of the three women, no longer young, was unflattering. Mr Halvorson should back up and have his microscope confiscated.
Who is this opera for? Somebody who likes contemporary opera and can afford the Met’s wallet busting ticket tariffs. It’s worth a trip to the cinema at greatly reduced prices compared to live. Will the work endure? I doubt it, but I’ve been wrong about so many other things that I will leave the decision to time and future audiences. Is there any other choice?
Metropolitan Opera House
December 10, 2022
THE HOURS
Opera in Two Acts
Kevin Puts / Libretto by Greg Pierce
Based on the book by Michael Cunningham and the Paramount Pictures film
Clarissa Vaughan………..Renée Fleming
Virginia Woolf………….Joyce DiDonato
Laura Brown…………….Kelli O’Hara
Richard………………..Kyle Ketelsen
Sally………………….Denyce Graves
Richie…………………Kai Edgar
Leonard Woolf…………..Sean Panikkar
Dan Brown………………Brandon Cedel
Louis………………….William Burden
Walter…………………Tony Stevenson
Barbara………………..Kathleen Kim
Kitty………………….Sylvia D’Eramo
Man Under the Arch………John Holiday
Nelly………………….Eve Gigliotti
Vanessa………………..Sylvia D’Eramo
Hotel Clerk…………….John Holiday
Mrs. Latch……………..Kathleen Kim
Julian…………………Atticus Ware
Quentin………………..Patrick Scott McDermott
Angelica……………….Lena Josephine Marano
Conductor………………Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production……………..Phelim McDermott
Set and Costume Designer……Tom Pye
Lighting Designer……….Bruno Poet
Projection Designer……..Finn Ross
Choreographer…………..Annie-B Parson
Dramaturg………………Paul Cremo
Video Director…………. Gary Halvorson
