If you missed the Metropolitan Opera’s live performances of “The Hours” and
didn’t catch it when it was shown live or recorded at your local theater, you still have a chance to watch it — right in the comfort of your own living room.
The much-lauded new opera will be the premiere episode of the 17th season of Great Performances at the Met on PBS. The first airing will be Friday, March 17, at 9 p.m. ET. In my area, it will also air Sunday, March 19, at 5 p.m. and Tuesday, March 21, at 8 p.m. All times are Eastern Standard.
Viewers in the U.S.A. can check local listings for the broadcast schedule of their PBS affiliate in their area.
The sold-out opera event of the year
“The Hours” played to sold-out audiences during its run at New York’s Lincoln Center from Nov. 22 through Dec. 15, 2022.
PBS Newshour called it, “The opera event of the year.” A Variety review claimed, “it’s Woolf who’ll make you swoon.”
Composer Kevin Puts adapted the opera from Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and the 2002 Academy Award-winning film by librettist Greg Pierce.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), it stars Renée Fleming alongside Tony winner Kelli O’Hara and opera star Joyce DiDonato. Phelim McDermott directs the production with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Christine Baranski hosts.
Get ready with reviews, synopsis, program
The opera uses Woolf’s and Cunningham’s prose as a departure point from which to explore the novels’ ambiguities and fluidities that are heightened further by musical expression, according to the PBS website.
You can read more rave reviews from critics, prepare for the performance by reading a synopsis, and download a program.
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