Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s adaptation of the George Saunders novel, which had its premiere this week at the Metropolitan Opera, affectingly captures the phantasmagorical spirit of its source.
By
Heidi Waleson
Oct. 21, 2026 at 5:05 pm ET
Peter Mattei (center) in ‘Lincoln in the Bardo.’ KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA
A major challenge of adaptation is to capture the spirit of the source material without being a copy of it. “Lincoln in the Bardo” by Missy Mazzoliand Royce Vavrek, which had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday, has done that and more, distilling the phantasmagorical world of George Saunders’s 2017 novel into an affecting, immediate theater piece that explores its serious themes without losing its fantasy or comedy.
The book has over a hundred narrators, relying on the reader to sift and construct. Mr. Vavrek’s elegant libretto, which deftly repurposes Mr. Saunders’s evocative period language, narrows that huge cast of characters to a handful. It is 1862, and Washington’s Oak Hill Cemetery is inhabited by ghosts who are trapped in limbo—or, in Tibetan Buddhist terms, the bardo—most refusing to believe that they are dead. They are joined by Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son, Willie (Everett Sobers on opening night), who has died of typhoid. Lincoln (Peter Mattei), the opera’s only living character, visits the graveyard alone at night, mourning his child. The principal ghost narrators—Vollman (Ryan McKinny), Bevins (Jonah Hoskins) and the Reverend (Christine Goerke)—are determined to get Willie to move on to the next phase of existence, since the bardo is a bad place for children.
Solo and ensemble moments are skillfully balanced to create character and atmosphere while advancing the story. We get the backstories of the ghosts, who obsessively relive their tragicomic ends. Relieved of the need for realism, Ms. Mazzoli has had fun with these, and the singers are game for the adventure. As Miss Elise Traynor, a 14-year-old girl who died of a fever on the cusp of her sexual awakening, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzolets fly with a swooping, shrieking baroque-tinged aria while being transformed into a furnace, a giant mouth, and a herd of pigs. As another gender-swapped character, Ms. Goerke is the pious Reverend, the only bardo inhabitant who understands that he is dead. His tale of being found “Unworthy” on the Day of Judgment, recounted at the top of Act 2, is a grand scena for dramatic soprano, complete with off-stage choral thundering and a monumental orchestral nod to Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle.” Each choral section has a different style and focus; all are theatrically integrated. Early in the opera, otherworldly figures arrive to urge the ghosts to cross over, with multiple copies of each one’s tempter. Bevins is besieged by a sextet of Gilberts, the lover for whom he slit his wrists; Willie is pursued by five copies of his mother—but “they don’t smell like her.”
The serious heart of the opera is Lincoln and his crushing grief, limned in four striking arias evenly spaced out through just over two hours of music. Mr. Mattei’s velvety baritone brings rawness, lyricism, and even a bit of falsetto to the unfolding of Lincoln’s pain. The sorrow is intimate as he recalls tender moments with his child and expansive as he grieves for the dead of the Civil War and ponders his responsibility for all of it. Yet rather than being maudlin or depressing, the opera’s central thread is about taking responsibility, and the determined ghosts use their power to enter Lincoln, hear his thoughts, and push him—and Willie—forward into resolution.
The superb cast also includes Janai Brugger as the enslaved Mrs. Francis Hodge, perched on a tree branch, who demands revenge on the man who stole her children in a furious high soprano. (This is one instance in which the opera softens the original—in the novel, she graphically recounts the multiple rapes of another enslaved woman, the mute, traumatized Litzie.) Stephanie Blythe and Craig Colclough have a hilarious comic turn as a drunken couple, run over by a carriage while copulating in the road, who offer a laissez-faire portrait of child-rearing (as opposed to Lincoln’s). The necessary amplification of the young Mr. Sobers’s treble is slightly disconcerting, but his pure sound adds an extra dimension, and Willie’s final joyous aria when he understands that he is dead and “All is allowed” is an ebullient apotheosis. Tenor Joshua Blue brings sympathetic gravity to Thomas Havens, a man worked to death in slavery, who finds his purpose at the end—he enters Lincoln to bring him to an understanding of the suffering of the enslaved.
Ms. Mazzoli’s orchestration skillfully creates multiple sound worlds with the aid of some specialty percussion and keyboards, such as celesta, vibraphone and organ; she is careful to cushion and complement the vocal lines without overpowering them. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin brings out the score’s color and propulsion, and the excellent Met Opera chorus creates the seething world of the dead, occasionally playing kazoos.
The story involves a lot of supernatural behavior, including shape-shifting, and director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s production builds a ghost world that, like the opera, retains its underlying humanity. Adam Rigg’s cemetery set—trees, graves, a crypt—is enhanced by the purples and greens of lighting co-designers Yi Zhao and Stacey Derosier. Montana Levi Blanco’s splendid—and distressed—period costumes supply context and detail (Bevins, who died by suicide, had red strings hanging from his sleeves). Especially brilliant are the contributions of puppet designer James Ortiz, particularly the menacing tendrils that encase Willie. Puppeteers also operate Miss Traynor’s pig heads and the giant phallus—deployed once—that reminds the unfortunate Vollman of his unconsummated marriage to his much younger wife. Jeremy A. Chernick devised special effects like the pyrotechnics for the ghosts’ transition to another plane (called “matterlightblooming”); Raja Feather Kelly choreographed the unobtrusive dancing, and Hannah Wasileski and Hana S. Kim designed the subtle projections.
The production’s surprises are eye-catching, yet there is something homemade and friendly about them. How to show that a ghost has entered Lincoln? His white shirtfront lights up. Even the comedy ultimately turns gentle, as Bevins, Vollman and Miss Traynor sing a wistful trio, “The things of the world are with me still,” before transcending, and the angry Mrs. Hodge realizes that she is tired of her thirst for vengeance. With the final image—a Lincoln double riding a horse across the back of the stage—we understand that Havens is inside the President, spurring him forward toward the Emancipation Proclamation. It is the ghosts’ humanity that counts in the end.
