A grieving president, a graveyard full of restless ghosts and a story first told on the page by professor of English George Saunders G’88 are about to reach a worldwide audience.

The Metropolitan Opera will close the sold-out run of composer Missy Mazzoli’s acclaimed world-premiere opera, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, with a free live stream on its YouTube channel on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m. The stream will remain available through midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 18.

The opera is based on the 2017 Man Booker Prize-winning novel by Saunders, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. Saunders will introduce the Nov. 14 broadcast.

The opera is a ghost story set in President Abraham Lincoln’s Washington in 1862 during the lowest moments of the Civil War. The opera takes place in a ghostly realm known as the bardo, where Lincoln is the only living character. The arrival of his recently deceased son, Willie, is the catalyst for the action, which includes stunning realizations and magical transformations of the cemetery’s ghosts.

Saunders’ novel and Vavrek’s libretto grapple with Lincoln’s profound grief alongside the humor and levity of ghosts who struggle to comprehend their current state. Ultimately, the opera is about Lincoln’s acceptance of his son’s death and, through his interactions with the ghosts, his revitalized mission to free a people.

The intermission will include “The Making of Lincoln in the Bardo,” a documentary feature created by Dua Lipa’s global cultural platform Service95. The 17-minute film documents the two-month period leading up to the opera’s world premiere at the Met on Oct. 19. Through interviews with the cast and creative team, behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage and glimpses into the design process, the documentary captures the collaborative work required to prepare a new production for the stage.

The film extends a relationship with the novel that began in the Service95 Book Club. In October 2024, Dua Lipa chose “Lincoln in the Bardo” as her Monthly Read, writing that “there is no one writing today who can match George Saunders for compassion and empathy.”

She then sat down with Saunders for an in-depth interview, in which the two discussed the novel’s origins, its braiding of a father’s private grief with a nation’s grief during the Civil War, and their own creative processes, as well as reading from the book together.

The novel is being adapted into a feature film starring Tom Hanks in the role of President Lincoln.