Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and the Metropolitan Opera will co-produce "Lincoln in the Bardo", a new opera based on George Saunders’ novel.
The show opens at the Metropolitan Opera on Oct. 19 and will run until Nov. 15, 2026. The opera will be performed in April 2028 at the Jacobs School’s Musical Arts Center.
Previously, the Jacobs School and the Metropolitan Opera co-produced "the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay".
Abra Bush, the David Henry Jacobs Bicentennial Dean of the Jacobs School, said co-producing with the Metropolitan Opera is an opportunity for students to work with the finest directors, conductors and choreographers in the world.
She said there is a difference between a student having a world premiere on their resume and a student having a world premiere that is successful at the Metropolitan Opera on their resume.
“We're very proud to be tied to both the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and now Lincoln and the Bardo as well,” Bush said.
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"Lincoln in the Bardo" draws from the death of the former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln’s son, Willie, said Tom Kernan, Ted Jones Associate Dean for Artistic Operations at the Jacobs School.
While Lincoln works through the grief of losing his son, the audience gets the narrative of Lincoln and his pain, as well as what it meant to be alive in the middle of the 19th century, in a two and half hour opera.
Kernan said the composer Missy Mazzoli and the librettist Royce Vavrek took the novel and condensed the characters so the audience can see them come through the storyline at various moments on stage.
Kernan said the novel has complex characters moving in and out of the story, and readers can flip back pages and reread. Opera audiences can’t pause and reread a page, but opera creators can take advantage of visual elements.
“We can have aural, melodic reference points, themes that come back, motives that come back time and again that can draw our attention to help the person viewing that opera and hearing that opera to recall what they heard already or what they saw already,” he said.
Auditions for the performance at the Jacobs School will be in the fall semester of 2027. There will be about 30 students singing principal roles, 40 to 60 students in an opera chorus, 60 to 70 students in an orchestra and a 20- to 60-student crew working on the show.
“These large co-productions usually take us to our absolute largest volume of students,” Kernan said. “And it's one of the reasons that makes them really of great interest to us, to have that many people have the experience of working with professionals in the field.”
Since this is a new opera, students won’t have a faculty member as a mentor who may have previously played their role.
“On some hand, it's ever more challenging because you can't go and say, how did five other people sing this role,” he said. “But it's also really freeing that you are the student that is initiating that role, that's bringing it about for the first time.”
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With the Musical Arts Center’s stage being designed based on the Metropolitan Opera’s model, there won’t have to be changes when the opera comes to Bloomington, Kernan said. But items related to costumes or scenic elements may change, depending on how the New York show goes.
“Having it first up in New York at the early part of their ‘26- ‘27 season, and then having it for us at the end of our ‘27-‘28 season is also good for the opera world broadly, to see how this show performs as a season opener, but also how it performs as a season closer,” Kernan said.
The Musical Arts Center is currently undergoing renovations that will replace the stage floor and stage equipment such as a 48-foot turntable and wagons that can roll scenery onto the center stage from the wings. Kernan said it should be completed by the time Lincoln in the Bardo comes to Bloomington.
“A lot of that equipment has been magical for our audiences over the years,” he said. “But it's at the end of its life or past the end of its life, and so to really have everything working as it should to deliver these types of shows, with so much flying in and out and rolling in and out, and lighting and projection work, having that work done before a show of this scope goes up is very helpful,” he said.
After the Lincoln and the Bardo leaves Bloomington, it will be performed at other professional theaters in the country, Bush said.
