The Hours at The Met

The way Kevin Puts describes the possibilities unlocked in opera, it seems only inevitable that Virginia Woolf's landmark novel Mrs. Dalloway would be a perfect fit for this powerful genre. Woolf's novel of a day in the emotionally resonant interior lives of strangers—aging socialite, Clarissa Dalloway, and "shell shocked" veteran, Septimus Smith—challenged London’s notions of time and the individual. Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel, The Hours, interpolated Woolf herself into a story of three women living in three separate cities and generations. The 2002 film adaptation, directed by Stephen Daldry and scored by Philip Glass, won an Oscar for Nicole Kidman as Woolf.