Article Summary: Missy Mazzoli’s opera opens tonight with Peter Mattei as Lincoln and costumes shaped by decay. #LincolnInTheBardo #MissyMazzoli #MetOpera #OperaPremiere
Lincoln in the Bardo opens at the Metropolitan Opera on October 19, with Peter Mattei as Abraham Lincoln and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Missy Mazzoli’s world premiere adapts George Saunders’s novel with librettist Royce Vavrek. Tonight’s opening also brings a costume brief in which historical dress carries the visible effects of decay.
The production runs through November 14. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs the story of a grieving father visiting his dead son, while spirits resist leaving the space between lives. This is a preview of the production’s published plans, not a verdict on a performance that has yet to begin.
Lincoln in the Bardo turns an ensemble into a ghost story
The Met’s current performance page lists Everett Sobers as Willie Lincoln for opening night. Christine Goerke, Stephanie Blythe and Anthony Roth Costanzo are among the ensemble. Their different vocal ranges give the ghostly population a varied musical cast before staging enters the equation.
The premise makes that population more than a background chorus to the president. Willie’s arrival unsettles a community of spirits. The adaptation therefore needs to hold a private loss inside a larger, shifting group of characters.
That is a strong reason for this story to move into opera. Multiple voices can occupy the same musical space without agreeing on its meaning. The form offers a way to keep individual reactions audible while making the gathering feel like a collective presence.
Costume design for Lincoln in the Bardo
Montana Levi Blanco’s costume design is especially relevant to a fashion audience. In the Met’s interview with the creative team, Blain-Cruz describes historical silhouettes affected by moss, mold and decay. The clothes are intended to register different periods of burial and different physical conditions.
That brief gives fabric a narrative task. A garment can establish a past social identity through its shape, then disturb that identity through its surface. The audience sees both the person’s former place in the world and the changes imposed by death.
From a design perspective, the tension between silhouette and deterioration is the interesting part. A broad outline may remain readable even when its surface appears damaged. Costume can preserve a character’s recognizable form while making its condition feel unstable.
The scenery works alongside the clothing
Set designer Adam Rigg and Blain-Cruz describe a cemetery-inspired environment of trees and overgrown grasses. Against that setting, clothing affected by organic growth can make the body seem less separate from its surroundings.
James Ortiz contributes puppetry and creature work to the production. The creative team’s account describes a collaboration between costume and movement for the threatening tendril figures. Those elements require more than an arresting still image: their outline must continue to work when a performer moves.
For a viewer interested in fashion, that is a useful distinction to watch tonight. A costume can look convincing in a photograph but communicate differently across a large stage. Shape, light and motion determine how much detail reaches the audience.
Lincoln in the Bardo and the unfamiliar sound
Mazzoli’s discussion of the music includes unusual percussion and string techniques, alongside a chorus passage using kazoos. These are the composer’s descriptions of the score, rather than RUNWAY’s account of hearing it in performance.
The detail suggests an adaptation willing to interrupt a solemn atmosphere. A story about mourning does not have to maintain a single musical temperature. An unexpected sound can make the surrounding grief feel stranger, without reducing it to a joke.
The same logic applies to historical costume. Recognizable period dress can establish a visual expectation that another detail then unsettles. When music and clothing both resist a fixed mood, the stage can support the novel’s shifting relationship between absurdity and loss.
The performance dates change the practical picture
The Met lists the October 19 curtain at 8 p.m. Its calendar also includes afternoon performances on October 24 and November 7, alongside evening dates. That gives visitors different ways to fit the work into a New York trip without assuming every performance begins at the same hour.
Matinee and evening attendance also change the surrounding itinerary. Plan the rest of the visit around the chosen curtain, leaving time to enter and find the seat. The useful fixed point is the booked performance, rather than a general assumption about how an opera-house evening usually works.
Tonight is a beginning, not a critical verdict
The published calendar lists October 19 as the opening performance, with further dates across the following weeks. Check the selected date’s cast rather than assuming every singer appears throughout the run. A production title does not guarantee an identical lineup at each performance.
For Lincoln in the Bardo, the clearest fashion question concerns how the clothes carry time. Does a historical outline remain legible beneath the marks of decay? That is a more useful question to take into the theater than a preassigned judgment about whether the costumes are beautiful.
RUNWAY’s Music coverage follows the visual choices surrounding performance as well as the score. Lincoln in the Bardo gives that relationship a precise assignment tonight: voices, bodies and clothing must make a population of ghosts distinct. The publication’s background appears on the About RUNWAY Magazine page.
