Fleming returns to Met in new opera based on 'The Hours'

Renee Fleming is returning to the Metropolitan Opera in a new work whose subject will be familiar to readers and cinephiles

NEW YORK -- It’s been nearly five years since Renee Fleming sang her last Metropolitan Opera performance of Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” a work that culminates in a sublime trio for women’s voices.

Now Fleming is planning her return to the Met in a new opera that also has three major roles for women, with plenty of opportunities for harmonizing.

She’ll star as Clarissa Vaughn in an adaptation by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Greg Pierce of “The Hours,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham and then a movie starring Meryl Streep as Clarissa.

“I haven’t been singing ‘Rosenkavalier’ in a long time, and the idea of a trio with three women wasn’t lost on me,” Fleming, 63, said of the new venture.