THE HOURS With Kelli O'Hara, Renée Fleming & More to Air on PBS

The Metropolitan Opera's recent production of The Hours, starring Renée Fleming, Kelli O'Hara, and Joyce DiDonato, will air on PBS on Friday, March 17 at 9 p.m. on PBS.

Phelim McDermott directs with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Christine Baranski will host the special.

Fleming made her return to the Met in this new opera by from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts, adapted from Michael Cunningham's novel, inspired by Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." Also inspired by the 2002 Oscar-winning film, the opera follows three women from different eras who each grapple with inner demons and their roles in society.

With Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium for this production by Phelim McDermott, the cast also features mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves as Sally, Clarissa's partner; soprano Kathleen Kim as Barbara and Mrs. Latch; soprano Sylvia D'Eramo as Kitty and Vanessa; countertenor John Holiday as the Man Under the Arch and the Hotel Clerk; bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen as Richard, Clarissa's best friend who is dying from AIDS; tenor William Burden as Louis, Richard's ex-boyfriend; tenor Sean Panikkar as Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf's husband; and bass-baritone Brandon Cedel as Dan Brown, Laura Brown's husband.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Cunningham's novel was adapted into an Oscar-winning film version starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman. The powerful story takes place in a single day and concerns three women from different eras-Virginia Woolf (DiDonato) in London in 1923, as she struggles to write her masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway; Los Angeles housewife Laura Brown (O'Hara), in 1949, who yearns for an escape from her loving family at the same time as she prepares for her husband's birthday; and, in 1999, editor Clarissa Vaughan (Fleming), a New Yorker haunted by the past as she plans a party to celebrate her closest friend in his final hours.

In addition to McDermott, who received wide acclaim for his staging of Philip Glass's Akhnaten, the creative team includes set and costume director Tom Pye, lighting designer Bruno Poet, projection designer Finn Ross, choreographer Annie-B Parson in her Met debut, and dramaturg Paul Cremo.