Missy Mazzoli on Adapting "Lincoln in the Bardo" as an Opera

Composer Missy Mazzoli identified a specific scene in George Saunders's novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" as the moment she recognized its operatic potential. In that passage, figures trapped in the bardo encounter multiple versions of people who matter to them, each urging them onward. Mazzoli described visualizing a cascade of arrivals and departures, with voices singing individually, in groups, and then alone. That choral image shaped her approach to setting the novel's text for the stage. The Washington Post reported on how the book supplied the language for an opera centered on a president's grief.