BOMB’s Spring Issue Launch with the Met Opera & Missy Mazzoli

BOMB Magazine, the Metropolitan Opera & Ace Hotel Brooklyn present: Performances from Lincoln in the Bardo
Based on the book by George Saunders, Composed by Missy Mazzoli, Libretto by Royce Vavrek

Celebrate BOMB’s Spring Issue with an exclusive preview from Lincoln in the Bardo, an opera featuring music by BOMB contributor Missy Mazzoli. Mazzoli and Vavrek’s Lincoln in the Bardo, based on the book by George Saunders, premieres at the Metropolitan Opera in October 2026. 

Director Lileana Blain-Cruz joins Composer Missy Mazzoli in conversation after the performance. 

This event is a part of BOMB’s ANALOG/DIALOG series—a partnership with Ace Hotel Brooklyn through which BOMB Magazine invites artist/s for an intimate dialogue and performance to explore what inspires them, what challenges them, where they are, and where they want to go.

Excerpts of Lincoln in the Bardo, presented by the Metropolitan Opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, based on the novel by George Saunders, dir. Lileana Blain-Cruz.

关于 Lincoln in the Bardo: Following the death of his 11-year-old son, the grief-stricken Abraham Lincoln makes nightly pilgrimages to the family crypt. Meanwhile, the spirits of the graveyard’s dead linger in a strange limbo between death and the afterlife, where ghosts complain, commiserate, and quarrel—and a struggle erupts over the boy’s soul. 

In BOMB’s Spring 2025 Issue, Mazzoli interviews author Karen Russell, and the pair discuss their upcoming collaboration on a new opera, The Galloping Cure.

Details: 

• 6:30 PM Doors
• 7:00 PM Performance
• 7:25 PM Conversation & Q&A

All ticket holders will receive the spring issue of BOMB Magazine. 

Bios:

Missy Mazzoli Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (The New York Times). Her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, pianist Emanuel Ax, Opera Philadelphia, Scottish Opera, Opera Comique, LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, the Detroit Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, JACK Quartet, violinist Jennifer Koh, mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, and many others. In 2018 she made history when she became one of the two first women (along with composer Jeanine Tesori) to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. That year she was also nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Classical Composition” for her work Vespers for Violin, recorded by violinist Olivia De Prato.

Mazzoli has received considerable acclaim for her operatic compositions. Her most recent opera, The Listeners, (commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, Norwegian National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera) was created with longtime collaborator Royce Vavrek and playwright Jordan Tannahill and premiered in September 2022 in Oslo in a production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. The Listeners is an original story set in our time about our search for community and meaning, and the power of charismatic leaders who exploit these desires. Her third opera, Proving Up (commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and New York’s Miller Theatre) with libretto by Vavrek, is based on a short story by Karen Russell and offers a surreal and disquieting commentary on the American dream through the story of a 19th century Nebraskan homesteading family. The Washington Post called it “harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time”. Mazzoli’s second opera, Breaking the Waves, also with Vavrek, was described as “among the best 21st-century operas yet” (Opera News), “savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original” (Wall Street Journal), and “dark and daring” (The New York Times). 

Mazzoli is an active TV and film composer and wrote and performed music for the fictional character Thomas Pembridge on the Amazon TV show Mozart in the Jungle. She also contributed music to the documentaries Detropia and Book of Conrad and the film A Woman, A Part. Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own compositions. Her music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer.

Lileana Blain-Cruz is a director from New York City and Miami. She is the recipient of the Drama League’s 2022 Founders Award for Excellence in Directing, and is currently the resident director of Lincoln Center Theater. Lileana was named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist, a 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist, and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow. Recent projects include: The Skin of Our Teeth (Lincoln Center, Tony nomination); Stranger Love (LA Philharmonic); Create Dangerously (Miami New Drama); The Listeners (Opera Norway, a new opera by Missy Mazzoli); White Girl in Danger (Second Stage / Vineyard Theatre); Dreaming Zenzile (St. Louis Rep, McCarter Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop / National Black Theatre); Marys Seacole (LCT3, Obie Award); Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding’s …(Iphigenia) (MASS MoCA, Arts Emerson, The Kennedy Center); Hansel and Gretel (an opera film for Houston Grand Opera); Afrofemononomy (PSNY); Anatomy of a Suicide (Atlantic Theater Company); Fefu and Her Friends (TFANA); Girls (Yale Rep.); Faust (Opera Omaha); Fabulation, Or the Reeducation of Undine (Signature Theatre); Thunderbodies and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (Soho Rep.); The House That Will Not Stand and Red Speedo (NYTW); Water by the Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum/CTG); Pipeline (Lincoln Center); The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theatre, Obie Award); Henry IV, Part One and Much Ado About Nothing (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); The Bluest Eye (The Guthrie); War (LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater and Yale Rep.); Salome (JACK); Hollow Roots (the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater). She received her BA from Princeton and her MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where she received both the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize and the Pierre-Andre Salim Prize for her leadership and directing.

Tessa McQueen Originally from Colorado, soprano Tessa McQueen was a 2024 National Finalist in the Met’s Laffont Competition, now in her first year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. During the Met’s 2024–25 season, she made her company debut as the Countess Ceprano in Rigoletto, will sing the Priestess in Aida, and cover Chloë in The Queen of Spades. 

Joel Balzun Praised for his “voluminous sound” and “imposing, ringing baritone,” Canadian baritone and composer Joel Balzun is establishing himself as a dynamic force both on and off the stage. A recent award-winner in the Wagner Society of New York Singers Competition, he also won the Fulham Opera Robert Presley Memorial Verdi Prize. Highlights of the 2024-2025 season include his house début at Chautauqua Opera as Marcello (La bohème) and the title role in Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Lincoln in the Bardo, which he also previews for the Metropolitan Opera

Mariam Bombrun is a pianist and coach from Paris, France, currently in her first year in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. During the 2024–25 Met season, she will make her Music Staff debut as an Assistant Conductor for Le Nozze di Figaro, as well as prepare and perform in the Program’s Patron Concert of opera scenes and annual spring recital series held at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 

About:

The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world. Lincoln in the Bardo premieres at The Metropolitan Opera in October 2026. 

BOMB Magazine is a nonprofit, independent publishing house that has been spotlighting artists in conversation since 1981. BOMB’s mission is to deliver the artist’s voice. We develop, publish, and preserve artist-generated material, offering unique insight into the creative process.