The Metropolitan Opera doesn’t usually compete with fashion week for star power, but Monday night at Lincoln Center came close. On October 19, a mix of pop stars, comedians, actors and literary royalty walked the red carpet for the opening-night gala of Lincoln in the Bardo, a brand-new opera based on George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel.

Here’s who showed up, and why this particular premiere drew such an eclectic crowd.

Who walked the red carpet

According to Page Six, which ran a full gallery from the evening, Dua Lipa was one of the night’s headline arrivals, photographed several times on the carpet. Amy Poehler attended with Joel Lovell, while Saturday Night Live alum Bowen Yang arrived alongside his podcast partner and longtime friend Matt Rogers.

The guest list kept stretching across worlds. Page Six also spotted:

  • Kate Walsh with Andrew Nixon
  • Gina Gershon and musician and artist Laurie Anderson
  • Comedian and filmmaker Julio Torres
  • Musician Dev Hynes
  • Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo
  • Bruna Petrillo

It was the kind of crowd that tells you this wasn’t a routine night at the opera. The Met was clearly treating the premiere as a cultural event, not just a new production.

The author got the spotlight too

Some of the warmest red-carpet moments belonged to the people behind the work. George Saunders, whose 2017 novel inspired the opera, posed with Paula, Alena and Caitlin Saunders. Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, the creative team who turned the book into an opera, were photographed together. The Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, arrived with Pierre Tourville.

For Mazzoli, the night carried extra history. As NPR noted, she is the first woman composer in the Met’s history to have a world premiere on its stage.

What the opera is about

Saunders’ novel takes place over a single night in 1862. President Abraham Lincoln’s young son, Willie, has died, and the boy finds himself stuck in the “bardo,” a liminal space between life and whatever comes next. He’s surrounded by restless spirits who don’t realize they’re dead, while his grieving father visits the graveyard where he has been laid to rest.

The book is famously unusual. NPR points out that it’s narrated by 166 different characters. To make it work on stage, Vavrek streamlined the story to focus on five of them. “It was really, really, really fun to get to sort of streamline,” he told NPR, “but with the pure intention of keeping George’s unbelievable imagination alive.”

Baritone Peter Mattei sings Lincoln, and dramatic soprano Christine Goerke plays the Reverend, a role Mazzoli wrote specifically for her voice. According to NPR, it is the first role Goerke has ever premiered.

Kazoos, puppets and pyrotechnics

If anyone in the audience expected a stiff, solemn evening, the opening minutes were designed to change their mind. NPR described the chandeliers and lights in the Met’s auditorium flickering as if possessed before the curtain rises on a nighttime graveyard. Then dozens of ghosts rise from their graves and announce themselves by playing kazoos.

“Sixty-five brilliant, trained opera singers playing the kazoo,” Mazzoli told NPR. “I really wanted to start this opera with a sound that signals to the listener that we are not quite in everyday reality.”

Director Lileana Blain-Cruz said the staging had to solve some tricky problems, like souls entering other souls and a child passing through a roof. The answers, per NPR, include puppets, pyrotechnics and some simple stage magic, with Mazzoli’s orchestration adding explosive musical moments when spirits move on to the next realm.

Why it’s more than a gala

Galas at the Met are always glamorous, but world premieres of new operas are relatively rare events, and ones built on a beloved contemporary novel are rarer still. Drawing names like Dua Lipa and Bowen Yang helps put a 21st-century opera in front of audiences who might never think to buy a ticket.

Despite its subject, the creative team insists the show isn’t a downer. “It’s a strangely inviting universe,” Blain-Cruz told NPR. “The subject is full of life and joy, as much as it is about grief.”

The final curtain

Between the A-list arrivals and a history-making composer, the Lincoln in the Bardo premiere gave New York one of its most talked-about nights of the fall arts season. If the red carpet is any sign, this kazoo-filled ghost story may be the rare new opera that gets people outside the opera world talking, too.

Image: Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, January 30, 2025 by D. Benjamin Miller via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0