NEW YORK — The setting is a cemetery. Almost all the characters are dead. And then there is Abraham Lincoln, who is alive but paralyzed by the grief of his 11-year-old son’s death.
If this capsule description makes “Lincoln in the Bardo” sound like a dreary night at the opera, it is far from that, according to its creators.
“It looks pretty heavy,” said Royce Vavrek, who composed composer Missy Mazzoli’s libretto for George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel. “But it’s also so exuberant, sometimes quite funny. There’s such heartbreak and such joy.”
The inspiration behind both the novel and the opera is the concept of bardo in Tibetan Buddhism, which refers to the period between physical death and rebirth.
The ghosts living in Georgetown’s Oakhill Cemetery refuse to accept the circumstances – often sudden or violent – that ended their lives.
They call their coffins “sick boxes” and can only find peace when they can accept their true situation, disappearing in a spectacular explosion of fireworks; Saunders coined the term “matter-light bloom” (as a “little nod to James Joyce”).
Throughout the opera, we learn the life stories of many characters, from the inspirational to the tragic and ridiculous.
“The opera honors that life is not all gloom and gloom,” said Lileana Blain-Cruz, who directed the work for its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera. “People have desires and hungers, and we’re silly and funny. There’s something wonderful about encountering the fullness of life in all these characters.”
Into this netherworld come typhoid victim Willie Lincoln and his distraught father, who visits his son’s grave late at night and cradles the boy’s corpse in his arms. At the end of the opera, Willie accepts the fact that he is dead, and Lincoln leaves the cemetery, ready to take on the burden of guiding the nation through the Civil War.
According to Mazzoli, the biggest challenge in creating the score was that the film was about the death of a child.
“When I’m writing, there are years when I’m alone with these characters,” he said. “I really tried to live this kid’s character, but it’s hard to get into that place every day.”
When he realized that he had been freed from worldly constraints since Willie died, he solved the problem by focusing on the end of the story.
“He sings this incredible aria where he says, ‘Everything is allowed now,'” Mazzoli said. “’Now that I’m dead, I can go to the party, fly out the window, hang from the chandelier, drink rum.’
“He found a beautiful way of looking at it and kind of woke up the other dead people in the cemetery about it,” he said. “I needed to find that positive bent so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sadder parts of the story.”
The opera will open on October 19, with Met music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducting, and will run for nine performances. Baritone Peter Mattei takes on the role of Lincoln, and with a slight gender switch, soprano Christine Goerke is the Priest and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is Miss Elise Traynor.
Goerke, one of the leading dramatic sopranos of her generation in operas by Wagner and Richard Strauss, said she was thrilled when Mazzoli told her he was considering playing the role of the Priest.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for a role to be written for me,” he said. “This is the meatiest and most amazing role.”
Vocally, this covers his entire range (“There’s a moment where I go two octaves down from High C!” he said.) And it’s also dramatically compelling. Unlike the other ghosts, the Priest knows he is dead but resists his fate because he had a vision that he was doomed to eternal damnation. In the end, he makes a heroic sacrifice that could save him.
Mazzoli’s music has playful moments, starting with the prologue where choir members blow into kazoos.
“I’m interested in non-virtuosic instruments in virtuosic settings,” he said. “I’m sure there are people who are really good at the kazoo, but anyone can pick it up and blow into it and make noise. I love it in the context of the Met and with some really talented singing.”
Blain-Cruz and the production team ensured there was plenty to feast the eyes on, from pyrotechnics to puppetry to a black mustang named Zeus carrying a Lincoln-esque figure toward the White House in the final act.
This is the sixth collaboration between Vavrek and Mazzoli and comes on the heels of the world premiere of “The Galloping Cure,” which received rave reviews in Edinburgh and will have its U.S. premiere in San Francisco next season. Met general manager Peter Gelb promises there will be more Mazzolis at the Met in the coming years.
Saunders isn’t done with “Lincoln” yet. He wrote the script for the feature film version, directed by Duke Johnson, combining live action and stop motion, and starring Tom Hanks.