ABE AMONG THE GRAVES

Death of Classical takes “Lincoln in the Bardo”
where it was practically begging to go: the cemetery

Talk about knowing your venue. Before the Metropolitan Opera unveils Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Lincoln in the Bardo on October 19, Death of Classical is taking this ghost-filled new opera out for a pair of test drives. In cemeteries.

Of course they are.

To launch its 10th anniversary season, Andrew Ousley’s wonderfully macabre Death of Classical is partnering with the Met for two immersive previews of one of the fall’s most intriguing new operas: September 25 at Brooklyn’s magnificent Green-Wood Cemetery and October 15 at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, where—because apparently having a cemetery merely next door wasn’t enough—premium ticket holders can tour the historic churchyard before heading inside.

Based on George Saunders’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo has music by Missy Mazzoli, a composer who also happens to be a certified death doula (you really couldn’t make this up), and a libretto by Royce Vavrek. Set during a single night in the Civil War, it finds a grief-stricken Abraham Lincoln returning to the tomb of his 11-year-old son Willie, only to enter the bardo, a liminal realm between life and death populated by a strange chorus of spirits unable—or unwilling—to move on.

If ever an opera screamed Death of Classical, this is it.

Green-Wood should provide a doozy of an introduction. Audiences enter beneath its gothic arch at sunset before heading deep into the cemetery on a site-specific journey incorporating music, dance, spoken word, theatrical encounters and spirits—both the ghostly and drinkable varieties. As darkness falls, stars from the Met production will perform excerpts from Mazzoli’s score, followed by a conversation with Mazzoli and Vavrek, moderated by music journalist Amanda Petrusich.

Three weeks later, the dearly departed get another crack at it. At Trinity Church on October 15—just four days before the Met world premiere—artists from the production will again offer musical excerpts, accompanied by a conversation with the creators. Premium tickets include a reception and tour of Trinity’s historic Churchyard, permanent home to Alexander Hamilton, who presumably will not be singing.

The timing couldn’t be more delicious. Death of Classical has spent nearly a decade presenting classical music and opera in crypts, catacombs, cemeteries and churches, finding ways for architecture, history and music to talk to one another. Now, for the beginning of its tenth year, along comes an opera about a grieving president wandering through a cemetery and communing with the dead.

Sometimes the programming gods—or perhaps the ghosts—simply hand you one.

Saunders’s novel moves between devastating grief, mordant humor and the downright bizarre, and the previews promise an early glimpse of how Mazzoli and Vavrek have translated its sprawling chorus of voices to the operatic stage. The full answer arrives at the Met in October. But hearing the music first among actual graves, as daylight disappears over Green-Wood? Now that’s what I call a preview.

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Lincoln in the Bardo: Immersive Cemetery Preview
Death of Classical and The Metropolitan Opera
The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
September 25, 2026
immersive experience 6–7:30; preview 7:30–8:30
tickets $15–$400

Trinity Church & Cemetery in New York City
October 15, 2026
reception and cemetery tour 5:15–6:30; preview 6:30–7:30
tickets $15–$125

Lincoln in the Bardo world premiere
The Metropolitan Opera
opens October 19, 2026

for tickets, visit Death of Classical and The Metropolitan Opera

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