Fall New York City Opera Event — ‘The Hours’ Performed and Premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in November — It started with Rene Fleming’s pitch.
As superstar soprano Fleming pondered a new project, her right-hand man Paul Battsell announced that Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Interweave one day. Wolf is writing a book. A mid-century housewife named Laura Brown she’s reading. 1990s editor Clarissa Vaughan is throwing parties here for her friends who died of AIDS, as did Clarissa Dalloway.
“The Hours” won a Pulitzer Prize in Cunningham in 1999 and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film in 2002 starring the power trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman.Crucially, the film Scored by Philip Glasswhose soundtrack was “Mrs. Dalloway”.
Fleming, who sings the role of Clarissa, said in an interview, “I loved and loved this movie when it came out.” Looking back, suicide, living as an LGBTQ person in New York City at the time, that era, everything was powerful to me.So when Paul proposed, I thought: That’s perfect.Three people. diva, what do you want?”
Peter Gelb, General Manager of Metropolitan Airlines, agrees. Kevin Patz, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for “Silent Night,” was working here with librettist Greg Pearce, but the company needed two more stars. Kelly O’Hara is a bonafide musical actress of Tony Award-adorned operas, and she also played the role of Laura in The Met, where she stood out as Despina in Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte.” And as Virginia Woolf, mezzo-soprano Joyce Didonato is a house regular and audience favorite.
Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered “The Hours” in concert format, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Reviewing the performance, Zachary Wolfe wrote for The New York Times: things together.
Nezet-Séguin, music director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be in the pits when the opera arrives at the Met in November, directed by Phelim McDermott (most recently known for “Akhnaten”) and choreographed by Annie B. Parson. To do. Though spread across the world, speaking together in a shared video call, her three stars of the production discussed preparations for rehearsals and the appearance of characters on the opera stage. Below is an edited excerpt of the conversation.
These three roles were written with your voice in mind. Can you explain how it actually works?
Kelly O’Hara Do you have a word for Kevin Putz? To have a composer who is alive now, who is writing now, who is writing so beautifully now—it was so special that René chose him. I came to some singing sessions just for that. I don’t take it for granted. To hear and make changes properly, he’s pretty mensch like that.
Rene Fleming He has written many songs for me and knows my voice well. What works for me is having a separation between phrases. As such, it doesn’t consistently get bogged down in high registers or challenging teschulas. And that makes it possible.i love [singing] It’s in my living room, so I hope it translates to the big house.
Joyce Didonato I look at the page, I look at the score, and it says: Oh Kevin, that’s the bill the audience is waiting for. One of the cool things about what I’m working on is finding grooves very easily. It is made for us, but a sign of a truly good composer is that it is clear that this can live life beyond this work. so many different voices can take over this. We want these projects to have a legacy.
What do you think makes this version of “The Hours” an effective opera?
Fleming Libretti is difficult and requires a minimum word count to make room for the music, especially here. Greg Pearce’s libretto is concise, colorful and beautifully crafted.
Ohara It feels like the drama continues unabated. It makes it feel like a movie in a way. Some scores. It’s really exciting. The more I listen to it, the more it spins inside me. It’s one of those things that you go crazy for.
Fleming Kevin is not afraid to write something moving and beautiful for the public.
Didonato This is a moving story. Some of the more recent works I’ve seen are very graphic and angular, and in a way cleansing the emotions.And maudlin and saccharine were never good words in opera. And that’s what opera is best at.
One of the things I look for, certainly in new productions, is ‘why should I sing this? What I think they’ve done really brilliantly is the overlay, a way in which different people in different contexts can have the same emotional experience. No. There’s a scene where Virginia Woolf is trying to write something. She has a hard time starting her day and Laura comes in and reads it. We have the same words, one is created and one is received, the two are felt in very different ways. is added.
What are your thoughts on these characters that have been occupied by big-name Hollywood stars? Kelly, this is your second time playing the role of Julianne Moore. “Far From Heaven”
Ohara I didn’t go back to the movies. It’s kind of a rule for me. If you’ve seen it, you’ll never see it again. Because the only way to make it human, different, or new is to put your vision through it, metabolize it in your body, your mind, and produce it. I think that’s what people do. Opera is very different from cinema. I never thought of it as a comparison.
Didonato We are constantly competing with the ghosts of the past that created our roles. It’s always important to me to do research, but my job is to have the score in front of me, not to create a historical version. I learned that a long time ago. You have to go to the source, go to the sheet music, go to the text, and leave the rest behind.
Fleming I always wanted to play Meryl Streep [laughs]But for me, this is one of the only times in my life I’ve been able to get my period.I still have my ’90s clothes.
Ohara it’s wild. Go back to the 50’s. Always put me there
Didonato You get the cutest clothes from that era.
You admire how The Hours captures women’s emotions and experiences, whether it’s the book, the film, or this opera. All created by men. what do they get right?
Fleming This is tricky. Because I obviously wanted a woman on the creative team, so I have a choreographer. I think it will be important in the future to properly express the story being told.Even the fact that Dennis Graves [in the role of Sally] And I’m a lover on this one.This may be what people time — it’s [the queer] The community is not represented at least by principals. It’s very challenging in so many different ways.
That said, I think they did a very good job.Michael Cunningham did a great job.I have a long association with Strauss and Hoffmannsthal. There is a historic pairing of librettists and composers who have rendered the inner life of a woman astonishingly well.
Ohara From Laura Brown’s perspective, Michael Cunningham is writing his own mother. Look at Sondheim. He has a precedent for artists who solve things with their art. So I want to join them and bring out their stories, my own stories with my mother, and my own experience of being a mother. increase. I go in, and I have to make this woman just as human and empathetic.
Fleming AIDS is also central to Michael Cunningham’s books. A friend of mine told me, “I’m glad the Metropolitan Museum of Art finally made a gay story,” and I thought, There are various points of view in this work. It’s great in that sense.
Didonato To me, I think they captured the sense of captivity that Virginia felt, or imagines she felt at the time. But one of the attractions of theater is always getting inside other people’s heads. It could be me, a girl from Kansas City trying to understand Virginia Woolf. It could be a man trying to understand a woman, or a son about a mother. It’s dangerous to start blocking those creative outlets.
What’s exciting is that we demand that that door be open to everyone. But I don’t think that means the door should be closed all the way. We will be missing out on a lot of great art. I think it’s thrilling that these men want to tell this story. Let women write too. “The Barber of Seville” and “Figaro” abound. Have a woman write “The Hours” and compare.