Renée Fleming is back: the American soprano star returns to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Tuesday evening, for an unprecedented adaptation of “The Hours”, a mise en abyme of the life of the writer Virginia Woolf.
Michael Cunningham’s novel released in 1999 and crowned with a Pulitzer Prize, then film (2002) nominated nine times for an Oscar, “The Hours” (“The Hours” in the original version) tells the story of three women from generations, but all linked by the same work by the British author: “Mrs Dalloway”.
In film, Nicole Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2003 for her portrayal of the writer, afflicted with depression and mental frailty when she worked on this novel in the early 1920s. Her fate paralleled that of a mother a Californian in the 1950s trying to escape a conventional life (Julianne Moore), and a New York literary editor (Meryl Streep), confronted with the illness of his AIDS-stricken partner.
Three prestigious actresses are succeeded by a trio of renowned singers: mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato – winner of three Grammy Awards in her career – to play Virginia Woolf, Broadway and opera star Kelli O’Hara, and Renée Fleming as the New York Publisher.
With this creation, Renée Fleming, great American opera star, returns to the prestigious stage of the Met Opera, where five years ago she greeted one of her greatest roles, in Richard Strauss’ “Rosenkavalier”.
In his eyes, the opera is the “perfect” genre to adapt “The Hours,” “because of the complexity of dealing with three different” time periods.
– Music is a “river” –
In an interview with AFP, he likens music to “a kind of river that we can all float on, together or separately.” It was she who came up with the idea for this adaptation and whispered it in the ear of composer Kevin Puts.
“What you can do in music that you really can’t do in a film or a book is that you can, at some point, present all three stories… simultaneously,” says the composer.
Prior to this project, Renée Fleming was already working with the composer, for whom she played the great 20th century painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
With a common thread, it tells the stories of powerful women.
“Too often in opera, historically, women have been sort of pawns,” she explains.
“They have been victims, they have been at the center of power struggles when they didn’t have any (…) Now I want to tell stories of extraordinary women”.
In addition to the power of voices, “The Hours” incorporates modern dance in a way not often seen in traditional works, with dozens of performers physically manifesting the characters’ emotions.
For Renée Fleming, productions such as “The Hours” can play a vital role in rejuvenating opera and attracting new audiences. A long-term goal that the Metropolitan is committed to achieving.
The institution had opened its 2021 season showing, for the first time in 138 years, the first work composed by a black musician, “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” by Terence Blanchard, a flamboyant modern work, with jazz accents and blues.
“All of our art forms must truly represent our population,” Renée Fleming insists.
“The Hours” premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan from November 22 to December 15.
