Her character in the opera adaptation of the 1998 novel and 2002 movie The Hours, Clarissa Vaughan, is preparing a party for her best friend Richard who is dying of Aids, and she needs, well, platters.
Puts, 50, said he instantly saw the potential for opera to take the story to places that literature and film would struggle to go – especially in the interplay between the characters across time and place.Given how Puts and Fleming conceived the opera together, it is no surprise that the composer wrote the music very much with her voice in mind.Puts said writing for three such titans imposed “immense pressure” on him which he dealt with by drawing on his musical muscle developed over 25 years of composing.In the opera, the three women are each granted their own sound world.
For Laura Brown, who is living outside Los Angeles right after world war II, I wanted to capture the music of that time and the sense that she is living in blissful domesticity, Pleasantville, but it’s not her world, it’s not her music.
Puts said that once he submerged himself into the libretto by Greg Pierce, he found himself feeling intense empathy for the characters.The composer’s dive into these thoughts while composing The Hours went so deep that he said it affected him personally in ways he hadn’t experienced before.That chimes with something memorable Fleming said to the New York Times about why she was drawn to Puts’s style of music?Puts unleashes opera’s freedom to cross boundaries by bringing all three women together on stage to sing in unison
It’s also the artistic denouement of the piece, the chance for Puts to bring the interplay of his sound worlds to its conclusion
The Hours is showing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York until 15 December
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