Synopsis:

The opera takes place in a single day. Clarissa is in New York City in 1999. Virginia is in Richmond, England, in 1923. Laura is in Los Angeles in 1949.

The chorus, representing Virginia’s inner thoughts, tinkers with the opening line of the novel she’s working on, Mrs. Dalloway.

Clarissa and her partner Sally are preparing their West Village apartment for tonight’s party celebrating Clarissa’s best friend, Richard, a writer who is dying of AIDS. Sally doubts Richard will be well enough to attend, but Clarissa refuses to accept the dire state of Richard’s health.

Clarissa, staving off anxiety about Richard, sets out to buy flowers for the party. She delights in the wonders of Washington Square and is intrigued by the otherworldly singing of the Man Under the Arch. She runs into Walter, a writer who shares Sally’s doubts about whether Richard will be well enough for his party.

Virginia Woolf has just woken up and entered her studio, anxious about beginning her new novel. As she watches her husband, Leonard edit proofs, she reflects on the many roles he plays in her life.

Clarissa enters the flower shop, and Barbara the florist greets her with a kiss. Clarissa escapes into a momentary fantasy in which Barbara is her lover and they never have to leave the shop. She finds the perfect flowers and heads off to check on Richard.

In her studio, Virginia finds it hard to start work on her novel. She is distracted by thoughts of London and its bustle, contrasting these visions with the lifeless suburbs of Richmond. Despite her fears about succumbing to depression, she starts to write, and it flows.

In her bed in Los Angeles, Laura Brown is reading the sentences from Mrs. Dalloway that Virginia is writing. Laura dreads facing her wifely and motherly duties, since today is her husband Dan’s birthday and her young son Richie is waiting for her downstairs. She staves off her anxiety by turning back to Mrs. Dalloway.

Laura enters her kitchen to find her energetic husband Dan and six-year-old Richie concerned about her. She tries to convince them she is fine, but internally agonizes about her fears and insecurities. Dan, unaware of the severity of her struggles, goes off to work.

Clarissa is irritated by Sally’s doubts about Richard’s health and wonders whether Sally is the best match for her. Virginia realizes that a character in her novel must die but she isn’t sure who. Laura struggles with the task of baking a birthday cake with Richie while managing her anxiety.

On her way to Richard’s, Clarissa stops at the corner where, years ago, she ended their nascent romantic relationship, breaking it off using a cruel phrase she now regrets. She reflects on how one sentence can change the course of a life.

Clarissa arrives at Richard’s apartment to make sure that he remembers the party. Richard, frail and forgetful, tells her he can’t face the party, but she snaps at him, telling him he needs to try harder. He confides in her that sometimes he still imagines them as lovers.

In Laura’s kitchen, her anxiety escalates as she tries to bake the cake with Richie. Virginia asks her cook, Nelly, whether she believes that a young woman could start off the day joyfully and then decide to kill herself. This leads Virginia into a suicidal fantasy foreshadowing the way she’ll eventually end her own life.

Laura’s neighbor Kitty visits and tells Laura that she might have cancer. Laura escapes into a romantic fantasy about Kitty. Snapping out of it, she finds herself kissing Kitty as she consoles her. Virginia, too anxious to write, decides to head out into the world.

Clarissa returns home to find Sally busily preparing for the party, focused on practical concerns about seating. Clarissa has a gnawing feeling that something’s terribly wrong with Richard and heads back toward his apartment. Virginia, seized with a need to escape, is unsure whether she should take the train to London or end her life in the river. Laura feels a desperate need to run away from her suffocating homelife and drops off Richie with the sitter, driving toward Pasadena, not knowing where she’ll end up. The three women are united in their need to escape and in their terror of what they might find.

Laura has found herself on a bed in an otherworldly hotel room, armed with a bottle of pills and Mrs. Dalloway. She doesn’t know why she’s there or what she’ll do now:  kill herself or read her book. She tries to piece together the last hour, remembering a surreal interaction with the Hotel Clerk.

Laura reads Mrs. Dalloway, conjuring up Virginia, who is seen approaching the river—perhaps to commit kill herself? Laura also contemplates suicide. Virginia is momentarily distracted by the voice of the Man Under the Arch. Leonard arrives and tells Virginia he was convinced that this time he’d find her dead, and he’d have to tell her sister Vanessa that he had failed. Virginia is moved by the depth of his concern.

Clarissa is heading back to Richard’s when she overhears a church choir rehearsing. Their lyrics seem written for her. Outside Richard’s apartment, she finds Louis, Richard’s ex-boyfriend, who is debating whether or not to visit him. He recalls the formative summer that the three of them spent in Wellfleet, triggering a flashback depicting the delirious closeness Clarissa and Richard once shared, a closeness that excluded Louis.

Virginia, back in her studio, hears children’s voices and wonders if she’s losing her mind. She goes out to her garden to find her sister Vanessa and her three children holding a funeral service for a dying bird. As Virginia manically makes a grave for the bird, Vanessa realizes the severity of her sister’s illness. In the hotel room, Laura castigates herself for considering suicide when she has a young child and another one on the way. She is determined to stay alive and to face her motherly duties.

Clarissa enters Richard’s apartment to find him standing on his window ledge. She is terrified, but he seems to finally be at peace. As she tries to convince him to step down, he explains that all he wanted was to write something good, something that might touch someone. He tells Clarissa he loves her and steps out the window, falling to his death on the street below.

As Clarissa races over to Richard’s broken body, the chorus becomes her short-circuiting psyche, reassembling images and words from the day. Laura brings herself to leave the hotel and drives down the Pasadena Freeway. Virginia, at the bird grave, realizes her sanity is slipping. All three women seem to be drowning.

Laura picks up Richie at the home of the sitter, Mrs. Latch. Richie tells his mother he was scared that she was gone because she had something “growing inside her,” which is what he heard Kitty say. At the Woolf’s dining table, Virginia thanks Leonard for the happiness he has given her. Dan comes home to his birthday celebration and expresses how happy his family has made him. Richard’s friends gather at his party, now a wake. Sally tries to convince Clarissa she did everything she could for him. Clarissa realizes that her failure to acknowledge Richard’s dire physical and mental state might have contributed to his death. Richard’s mother Laura arrives at the party and tries to express regret about her failures as a mother.

As the others recede, Clarissa, Laura, and Virginia find themselves in a space that transcends time and place, where they can finally perceive each other. They are astonished that all along, as they traveled through their days feeling alone, there were others who felt the same way, influencing and being influenced by others in ways that they couldn’t possibly understand.