Metropolitan Opera Premieres Missy Mazzoli’s 'Lincoln in the Bardo', a First for a Woman Composer

The Metropolitan Opera opens the world-premiere production of “Lincoln in the Bardo” on Monday night, bringing George Saunders’s Booker Prize-winning novel to its New York stage in a major new work by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. The company says the production makes Mazzoli “the first woman to have a world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera,” a milestone the Met announced in a press release.

The opera runs for nine performances through Nov. 14 at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz and stars Peter Mattei as Abraham Lincoln, with Christine Goerke as the Reverend, Anthony Roth Costanzo as Miss Elise Traynor and Ryan McKinny as Vollman. Everett Sobers sings Willie in his Met debut, with Michael Hurst taking the role on Oct. 31 and Nov. 14. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts most performances; Steven Osgood conducts on Oct. 31 and Nov. 14.

Saunders’s 2017 novel, which won that year’s Booker Prize, is set during the Civil War and centers on Abraham Lincoln’s grief after the death of his son Willie. The book is known for its many-voiced structure, assembling a chorus of the dead and the living in a form that has made it a natural candidate for operatic adaptation.

At the Met, that story is arriving in an overtly theatrical staging. Advance descriptions from the company and other coverage have pointed to puppetry, projections, pyrotechnics, illusion effects and even a live horse as part of the production’s visual language. Vavrek told The Associated Press that the piece balances darkness with wit and lift: “It does seem quite heavy. But it’s also so effervescent, quite hilarious at times. There’s such heartbreak, and such joy.” Blain-Cruz, also speaking to the AP, said, “The opera honors that life is not all doom and gloom.”

The premiere continues the Met’s broader push to present new contemporary work alongside standard repertory. If the company’s milestone framing holds, it is specifically about a world premiere by a woman composer at the Met, not the first time the company has staged an opera by a woman. For listeners outside the opera house, the Oct. 19 and Nov. 11 performances will be carried live on the SiriusXM app, with a later broadcast scheduled for Feb. 13 on the Met’s radio network and stream.