The Hours: Direct From the Met to the UV

Hopkins Center’s Loew Auditorium, December 10

In the Upper Valley, the opera is only days away.

Millions fell in love with the book, “The Hours,” which garnered a Pulitzer Prize for author Michael Cunningham. One day in the lives of three women, one in 1920s England, one in 1950s California, and a third in more contemporary New York City. The through line? Virginia Woolf’s novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.” Woolf in the 1920s is writing it, Louise in mid-twentieth century is reading it, and Clarissa in 1999—like the fictional Mrs. Dalloway—is planning a party, this time for an AIDS-stricken friend and poet, Richard.

The book was followed by the multi-Academy Award-nominated movie with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. Kidman in her role as Virginia Woolf won for Best Actress despite critics’ dislike for an improbable prosthetic nose designed to dull the actress’s glamor in favor of the so-called plainness of the famed author. It rendered Kidman unrecognizable on the screen.

And now there is the opera, with heavy hitters Renee Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, and Joyce DiDonato, premiering just days ago in New York City and marking Fleming’s return to the Met after a five-year absence. “The Hours” will appear on screen here in the Upper Valley on December 10 as part of the Hopkins Center’s Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series.

According to New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe, DiDonato as Virginia Woolf brings the show’s outstanding performance. He writes of the mezzo-soprano “Joyce DiDonato, sounding as confident and fresh, as sonorous and subtle, as she ever has in this theater.” Read the review here.) Broadway World’s Richard Sasanow (here) seems to agree; both have enthusiasm for the score.

(For more information and tickets, please click here.)

———————————————————

Over 2,000 subscribers and counting! You’re reading Artful, a blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley, and I hope you’ll subscribe and then share this with your friends and on your social media.

And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.