The Hours is a 2022 opera in two acts with music by Kevin Puts and an English-language libretto by Greg Pierce, based on Michael Cunningham's 1998 novel and its 2002 film adaptation, both with the same title.

[4][5] The idea for the opera arose from a conversation between soprano Renée Fleming and composer Kevin Puts when they were collaborating on his 2019 song cycle The Brightness of Light.

[5] The Hours was first performed on 18 March 2022 in a preview concert presentation at the Kimmel Center by the Philadelphia Orchestra under its conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

[1] The singers included Renée Fleming as Clarissa Vaughan, Jennifer Johnson Cano as Virginia Woolf, Kelli O'Hara as Laura Brown, Brett Polegato as Richard, Jamez McCorkle as Leonard Woolf, Deborah Nansteel as Sally, and Brandon Cedel as Dan.

[6] Nézet-Séguin, who is also the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, conducted the stage premiere at that company's house on 22 November 2022, in a production by Phelim McDermott.

[3] According to Jeff Lunden, writing for NPR, "the chorus and dancers are constantly onstage, helping to underline the central characters' emotional states.

[7] The instrumentation is from the composer's website:[8] The story is about a single day in the lives of three women: book editor Clarissa Vaughan in New York's West Village in 1999; novelist Virginia Woolf in Richmond, England, in 1923; and housewife and mother Laura Brown in Los Angeles in 1949.

In her house in the London suburb of Richmond, Virginia has awakened and entered her office, anxious to begin her new novel.

In her office, Virginia finds it difficult to begin her novel and thinks of central London and its many diversions, so different from her drab existence in suburban Richmond.

Although it is her husband Dan's birthday, and he and their six-year-old son Richie are waiting for her in the kitchen, she resumes reading.

Clarissa stops on the street on her way to Richard's and remembers the time she casually broke off their romantic relationship with simple, thoughtless words.

Virginia asks her cook Nelly whether a young girl who started the day happily could decide to commit suicide.

Virginia, wanting to escape Richmond, considers whether to take the train to London or drown herself in the river.

Laura enters a room at the Normandy Hotel with her tattered copy of Mrs. Dalloway and a bottle of pills.

Virginia, distracted by the voice of the Man Under the Arch, is found by Leonard, who expresses his fear of finding her dead and having to tell her sister Vanessa of his failure to save her.

She realizes the bird is dead and begins manically making the bed, accidentally pricking Angelica's finger with a thorn.

Laura in her hotel room rebukes herself for thinking of suicide when she has a young son and a baby on the way to take care of.

Laura picks Richie up from the sitter, and he tells her he was scared because he thought, like Kitty, she had something growing inside her.

Dan returns home to his birthday party and tells his family how happy they have made him.

Richard's mother, Laura, arrives and reveals she abandoned Dan and Richie and feels regret.

As the others leave, the three female protagonists, Laura, Clarissa, and Virginia sing a trio, realizing that in their connection to one another across different times and places, they are not alone.