Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announces the continuation of its collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera. The Jacobs School of Music will join the Metropolitan as co-producers for Lincoln in the Bardo, a new opera based on George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel. The show opens at the Metropolitan Opera on October 19 and runs through November 15, 2026. Following its initial run, the opera will be performed in April 2028 at the Musical Arts Center (MAC) at the Jacobs School.
The production, co-commissioned by Santa Fe Opera, is directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz and combines music by celebrated American composer Missy Mazzoli with a libretto by Royce Vavrek. The supernatural story takes place in the “bardo,” a transitional plane between the end of this life and the beginning of the next, populated by those who resist all the powers of light and darkness and refuse to accept their fates. The action revolves around 11-year-old Willie, the recently deceased son of Abraham Lincoln, whose grief-stricken visits to Willie’s tomb prevent his son’s spirit from moving on.
This engagement with the Met Opera builds on the collaborative world premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay at the MAC in November 2024, which was then performed at the Met in September 2025. Enhancing that momentum, these co-productions offer rich opportunities for many Jacobs students, and Lincoln in the Bardo will give students the chance to embody and develop roles inaugurated by opera luminaries such as Christine Goerke and Anthony Roth Costanzo.
The Jacobs and Metropolitan collaboration includes the co-productions and development of new work, as well as a multifaceted educational partnership. In this component, scholars at the Jacobs School are helping design and evaluate curricular materials for school educators, advancing national leadership in arts education; this project will help expand opera and classical music education, alongside efforts to gather and analyze data from participants in Met Opera’s HD Live in the Schools program.
Together, these projects strengthen the value of innovative arts education and enhance the possibilities of artistic production at the highest level.