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.

Twenty years later, another adaptation commissioned by The Metropolitan Opera, composed by Puts and his librettist, Greg Pierce, will be staged at The Met this November. This premiere will be a few months shy of a century-long journey from Mrs. Dalloway’s dramatized composition in 1923. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will play Woolf and sopranos Kelli O'Hara and Renée Fleming—who collaborated with Puts in Letters From Georgia—play Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughan. Earlier this year, the opera was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, also under Nézet-Séguin's baton. We speak to Puts about how his fifth opera introduces a new perspective to this story of a very long day.