Abraham Lincoln is about to encounter a problem that no president can solve: a son who cannot leave the world of the living.

On October 19, the Metropolitan Opera will premiere Lincoln in the Bardo, Missy Mazzoli’s adaptation of George Saunders’s novel. The setting is 1862, after the death of eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln. The boy’s spirit lingers in a cemetery crowded with other dead people who have yet to accept their condition. Peter Mattei sings Lincoln, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the opening performance.

The production has an unusual place in the Met’s history: Mazzoli is the first woman composer to receive a world premiere at the institution. Royce Vavrek wrote the libretto and Lileana Blain-Cruz directs. The source novel has many narrators, some unreliable and most dead. Turning that unruly chorus into opera will be the evening’s central artistic gamble.

Performances run through November 14.

Image: Metropolitan Opera promotional artwork. Source and further details.