Lincoln in the Bardo

Workshop Presentation with Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and Chautauqua Opera Conservatory

The Metropolitan Opera has commissioned composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek to create an operatic adaptation of George Saunders’ wildly imaginative, Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Chautauqua Opera Company partners with The Metropolitan Opera for a two-week orchestral workshop, using the combined forces of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the company’s 16 Young Artists, and 18 singers from the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory to realize Mazzoli’s bold and sparkling score. Celebrated soprano Christine Goerke joins the cast to sing the role of The Reverend, which has been written specifically for her. The workshop culminates with a public reading of excerpts from the opera. This first ever presentation with orchestra will be performed on the stage of Norton Hall, and will be followed by a discussion with Mazzoli, Vavrek and Saunders.

Public Presentation

Friday, July 11, 2025
3:15 p.m. • Norton Hall
Ticket Price: $25

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MUSIC
Missy Mazzoli

LIBRETTO
Royce Vavrek

GUEST SPEAKER
George Saunders

SUNG IN
English

FEATURED MUSICIANS
Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra
Chautauqua Opera Conservatory

Creatives

Missy Mazzoli

Composer

The music of Brooklyn-based composer Missy Mazzoli has been performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, LA Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Scottish Opera, Opéra Comique, LA Opera, the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird and many others. She was recently described as “one of the more inventive and surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times), and “a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra” (The New Yorker), has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, most recently for her orchestral album Dark with Excessive Bright, and has served as composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony and Opera Philadelphia. In 2018 she became, along with Jeanine Tesori, one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. In 2016 Mazzoli and composer Ellen Reid founded Luna Composition Lab, a nonprofit mentorship program for young female and nonbinary composers. Mazzoli teaches composition at Bard College and her works are published by G. Schirmer. missymazzoli.com

Royce Vavrek

Librettist

Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (“CBC Radio”). His opera Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music. His dynamic family of collaborators include composers Missy Mazzoli (Breaking the Waves, Proving Up), Mikael Karlsson (Melancholia, Fanny & Alexander), David T. Little (Dog Days, JFK), Ricky Ian Gordon (27, The House Without a Christmas Tree), and Paola Prestini (Silent Light). Royce is artistic director of Toronto’s experimental opera company Against the Grain Theatre. He is an alum of Concordia University (Montreal), NYU, and the American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program. roycevavrek.com / Instagram: @rvavrek

George Saunders

Author

A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and numerous literary awards, George Saunders is the celebrated author of a novel, four collections of short stories, a novella, a book of essays, and a children’s book. His most recent work, Liberation Day, is a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics and justice, cutting to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. It is this work that will help frame his joint presentation for the Chautauqua Lecture Series and Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, during a week dedicated to “Art in Action: Building Community Through the Arts,” in which he’ll consider the significance of books, stories and the literary arts as cultural touchstones in our increasingly siloed and stratified social and intellectual consciousness.

In 2017, Saunders won the Man Booker Prize for his long-awaited first novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of the 2014 Story Prize for short fiction and the 2014 Folio Prize, which celebrates the best fiction of our time.

His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ and Harper’s Magazine, and has appeared in The Best Short Stories: The O. Henry Prize Winners, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Best American Travel Writing anthologies. Named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2013, Saunders teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.

Steven Osgood

Conductor

Chautauqua Opera Company since 2009; General and Artistic Director since 2016

This is Steven Osgood’s tenth season as General and Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Opera Company. During his tenure the company has produced operas by Puccini, Verdi, Mozart and Humperdinck alongside contemporary works by Missy Mazzoli, John Corigliano, Philip Glass and others. In 2024 he conducted the world premieres of A.E. Reverie and Love, Loss and the Century Upon Us — two chamber operas commissioned by Chautauqua Opera. With the 2025 season, the company drawn on his vast experience in the development of new works with the New Opera Workshops.

Steve has conducted the world premieres of over 20 operas, including in recent seasons The Rising World at Seoul Arts Center, Intimate Apparel at Lincoln Center Theater, Breaking the Waves at Opera Philadelphia, JFK at Fort Worth Opera, The Scarlet Ibis, Thumbprint, Blood Moon, and Sumeida’s Song for the PROTOTYPE festival, as well as Missy Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar with Beth Morrison Projects. He has been conductor mentor on two occasions for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, leading the premieres of six new operas.

From 2001 to 2008 Steven was Artistic Director of American Opera Projects, where he conducted numerous developmental workshops. He founded the company’s internationally recognized Composers and the Voice Fellowship and remains the program’s Artistic Director. He conducted the premieres of As One in its sold-out run at BAM, and Paula Kimper’s Patience and Sarah at the 1998 Lincoln Center Festival.

Steve has been a member of the Music Staff at The Metropolitan Opera since 2006, with whom he has conducted workshops of several of the company’s commissions. He made his mainstage conducting debut at the Met in 2023 with Dead Man Walking, and returned to conduct Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded in the 2024/25 season.

Cast

Christine Goerke

The Reverend

Soprano Christine Goerke has sung much of the great soprano repertoire, beginning with the Mozart and Handel heroines and moving into dramatic Strauss and Wagner roles, in the most important opera houses of the world including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Royal Opera House, Paris Opera, and the Teatro alla Scala. She has also appeared with several leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms, and Sydney Symphony. Her recording of Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra won the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Classical Recording and Best Choral Performance. Her close association with Robert Shaw yielded several recordings including Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, and the Grammy-nominated Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. Other recordings include the title role in Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride for Telarc and Britten’s War Requiem, which won the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. Ms. Goerke was the recipient of the 2001 Richard Tucker Award, the 2015 Musical American Vocalist of the Year Award, and the 2017 Opera News Award.