Between Lives, Lincoln in the Bardo Opens at the Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera's newest opera gets its first public hearing tonight in a graveyard at the foot of Wall Street.

At 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, singers from the Met production perform selections from *Lincoln in the Bardo* in the churchyard and church at Trinity, 89 Broadway, according to the event page from Death of Classical, which organized the evening with Trinity Church and the Met. It is the right room for the job. The opera is a ghost story, and the full thing opens at Lincoln Center on Monday, October 19.

It is a world premiere, and a short run. The Associated Press, in a feature by Mike Silverman, puts it at nine performances, with Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the pit. The last one is November 14.

A Cemetery in Georgetown

The source is George Saunders's Booker Prize-winning novel. It is set in a Georgetown cemetery where Abraham Lincoln comes to the crypt that holds his 11-year-old son, Willie. The cemetery is crowded. Most of its residents are ghosts who have not accepted that they are dead.

The word *bardo* comes from Tibetan Buddhism. It names the passage between one life and the next, and both the novel and the opera take place inside it. TheaterMania calls the piece supernatural and describes the bardo as that transitional place.

By the end, as the AP tells it, Willie has accepted that he is dead.

That is a heavy premise, and the people making it know it. "It does seem quite heavy," librettist Royce Vavrek told the AP. "But it's also so effervescent, quite hilarious at times." Director Lileana Blain-Cruz put it more plainly. "The opera honors that life is not all doom and gloom," she said.

The opera honors that life is not all doom and gloom.

Who Is on the Stage

Missy Mazzoli wrote the music and Vavrek wrote the words. The AP counts this as their sixth collaboration, arriving close behind their opera *The Galloping Cure*.

Baritone Peter Mattei sings Lincoln. Soprano Christine Goerke is the Reverend, the one ghost who knows he is dead and still resists it. In the end, the AP reports, he makes a sacrifice that may redeem him. Mazzoli told Goerke she had her in mind for the part. "I have waited my whole life to have a role written for me," Goerke told the AP.

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo sings Miss Elise Traynor. The cast listings published by Goerke's own site and by Opera Online add Stephanie Blythe as Mrs. Baron, Janai Brugger as Mrs. Francis Hodge, Michael Mayes as Mr. Baron, Joshua Blue as Thomas Havens, Jonah Hoskins as Bevins and Ryan McKinny as Vollman. Everett Sobers sings Willie, with Michael Hurst taking the role on October 31 and November 14.

Mazzoli told the AP that the hardest part of the score was writing about the death of a child. She got through it by fixing on where the story ends. "I had to find this positive slant so I wouldn't be crushed by the sadder parts of the story," she said.

The score has its jokes. In the prologue, the AP reports, the chorus plays kazoos. Blain-Cruz's staging brings pyrotechnics and puppetry, and at the final curtain a black mustang named Zeus carries a Lincoln-like figure back toward the White House.

A Bigger Life for the Book

New operas at the Met are still rare enough to be events, and this one comes with a promise attached. The AP reports that general manager Peter Gelb says there will be more Mazzoli at the house in years to come.

Saunders's book has another life ahead of it too. He has written the screenplay for a feature film directed by Duke Johnson, mixing live action and stop motion, with Tom Hanks as Lincoln. That film is a separate project from the opera.

The Met has been courting new listeners all season. For one way in, see our story on the Opera for All lottery.

What to Know Before You Go

The Metropolitan Opera House is at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza. Opening night is Monday, October 19, at 8 p.m. The rest of the run, per the schedules on Opera Online and Goerke's site, is a 1 p.m. matinee on Saturday, October 24, then 7:30 p.m. on October 26 and 29, 8 p.m. on October 31, 7:30 p.m. on November 3, a 1 p.m. matinee on November 7, 7:30 p.m. on November 11 and 8 p.m. on November 14. Steven Osgood conducts on October 31 and November 14.

Tickets are sold through the Met box office. Its website was holding visitors in an online queue this week, so allow time.

Tonight's Trinity preview runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. and ends with a conversation with the creators, according to Stage and Cinema. On Thursday morning the event page showed the $125 premium tier and the $15 tier sold out, with a waitlist open. Trinity screens everyone at the door, so arrive early.

A father, a son and a cemetery full of the restless dead. On Monday they move uptown.