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Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
In Michael Cunninghams novelThe Hours, the words ring through three womens lives over most of a century.
Here, music often takes over.
Woolf marks the passing of time by Big Bens chimes: Leaden circles dissolved in the air.
Thats the sound of the composer nudging the writer aside:Ive got this.
But at the Met, the opera bursts from that claustrophobic frame into an exuberantly busy show.
Puts gives the orchestra plenty of chances to glimmer and swell.
The chorus thunders the dictates of conscience.
I was never confused about who was having which problems, or when.
The stories converge, as they must.
(Her last Met appearance in 2017 was when she retired from the role of the Marschallin.)
Its a dangerous move to evoke Strauss in an opera already so crammed with echoes of another classic.
The three women in Cunninghams novel have similar experiences in varying times and places.
Virginia labors away alongside her husband, Leonard, in her rarefied literary workshop.
Clarissa Vaughan tries to rustle up a celebration amid the devastation of AIDS.
Each tries to coax a few sprigs of joy and drops of purpose out of her desolation.
Eventually, the emotions they have in common become a liability for the opera.
The first act ends with invigorating sadness, but the second starts off slow and generically glum.
And then the opera bobs gently toward the final curtain, fading beautifully into darkness and resignation.
The Hoursis at the Metropolitan Opera through December 15.
