George Saunders is an author famed for his economy of language. His books are a study in precision, every word subtlety driving the plot and his characters forward. So when he received Royce Vavrek ‘s slim libretto of his Booker Prize-winning bestseller Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders was skeptical that the playwright had managed to capture the complexities of his narrative in even fewer pages than himself. But he was pleasantly surprised to discover that the opera had managed to do just that, and do it with incredible elegance and style. This shouldn’t come as a total shock given Vavrek is a prolific librettist who has become something of an indie opera icon, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his opera Angel’s Bone . For this adaptation, Vavrek once again teamed up with his longtime collaborator Missy Mazzoli, tackling the surreal story that takes someplace between life and death, exploring President Lincoln’s grief following the death of his young son, Willie. After catching an early performance of the opera in Chautauqua, NY, Saunders and Vavrek sat down ahead of the show’s opening at The Met to discuss Catholic high school, last-minute changes, and when a night at the theater becomes an existential experience.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Good to see you, brother. How are you doing?
VAVREK: I am. It feels good to be home. It’s not a luxury I’m afforded very often.
SAUNDERS: No, you cannot be at home during this important period, so get the heck out of there. You’re in full-blown rehearsals now, right?
SAUNDERS: Anything you’re finding particularly surprising or delightful?
VAVREK: There was a moment yesterday where Missy [Mazzoli] nudged me with her elbow and said, “Look over there.” And just outside the rehearsal room were five dancers dressed up as tendrils waiting to come in. It was the first time seeing the tendrils in their costumes, and they’ve been given a physicality by Raja Feather Kelly, and it was so magical to see the manifestation of one of the more insane elements of this story.
SAUNDERS: What a powerful thing it is to have all these people suddenly at work on this with all their brilliance and their imagination, it goes places you could never expect. Let’s go back to the beginning, talk me through Royce’s head the day he starts work on this miraculous libretto.
VAVREK: I was very confident going in because I was given this unbelievable prose by you, sir. I remember that there was a period of time when everybody would lean over to me and say, “Oh, you know what you need to read—it would make a great opera— Lincoln in the Bardo .” Missy and I both read the book immediately upon its publication and were well aware that it felt like something that we wanted to engage with at some point. Then a couple years later, Missy had this meeting with Peter Gelb, and she called me before and said, “I have a feeling that he is going to offer me a commission. What is it that I should pitch?” I’m like, “Missy, this is the opportunity for Lincoln in the Bardo .” Peter then read the book and said, “This is amazing and let’s go on this adventure.” When you get into the pipeline of the Metropolitan Opera, you are gifted with the amazing brilliance of Paul Cremo, who was my right-hand man and dramaturg for this project. We began with a treatment where I came up with about a two or three-page version of how the story could be distilled. I went through a number of drafts with Paul Cremo, and every line was scrutinized and made sure that it had a purpose.
SAUNDERS: One of the craziest experiences of my artistic life was getting a libretto and bracing myself like, “Oh, I’m sure it’s going to be insufficient in some way because it’s so short.” I read through it and was like, “Shit, that’s the book.” As somebody who does a lot of reduction in prose, I was so impressed with the beauty of that reduction. Could you give an overview and say, “Here’s why I left out what I left out strategically at that point”?
VAVREK: Well, one of the examples is in your novel, there is quite a bit of text up top that gives context for where we are historically. I had this impulse that we needed to start in the graveyard. And then just knowing how many characters are in the novel or how many voices–
SAUNDERS: Well, in the audiobook, it was 166 different actors needed to do the book.
VAVREK: Yeah. It would be impractical to have 166 voices on stage, so I did really focus the libretto on a few choice ghosts.
SAUNDERS: It was quite amazing for me to be able to look at your libretto and go, “Oh, George, there’s a really good dramatic spine in this book.” When you are reading a book like that, are there places where you go, “Oh, that’s an aria,” or, “Oh, this scene works in the book, but it’s not going to work in the opera,” or, “This scene is minor in the book, but I can see it coming alive in the opera”?
VAVREK: Well, when you think of opera and theater, there’s a lot of consideration for real estate, and I’m sure the same could be said for prose. So when I did the treatment I tried to come up with a spine, a very lean spine that kept the entire emotional journey and the depths of these characters, but really had to do it in a rather concise period of time, it meant that you really have to identify these big moments and then celebrate them. And it’s opera, so you want to luxuriate in moments as well. I wanted to keep as much content in there as humanly possible, but I had to be considerate that we only have a certain amount of time. I love that word, luxuriate.
SAUNDERS: Using that word is a form of luxuriating when you say luxuriate.
VAVREK: Absolutely. And of course Ms. Traynor is going to be a massive moment in the show. And I knew that the reverend’s confession wanted to open act two. I kept thinking of that amazing moment in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillow Man , when the protagonist offers a story at the top of act two, and so there’s a little nod to McDonagh right there. And obviously the Havens and Lincoln horseback ride at the end of the novel needs to be in the opera. And we have access to Lincoln’s psychology through Willie, but through the magic of opera, we’re able to allow Lincoln to sing that.
SAUNDERS: I was so moved by that and I thought, “Oh, good job, George,” but I didn’t actually do that. I was really impressed that the choices that you and Missy made so often completed my intention. If you were teaching a masterclass in libretto writing what are the basic principles that someone just starting would need to know?
VAVREK: Well, you learn so much by doing. One of the earliest pieces of advice that I got from a mentor in my teenage years was from Kathy Harper. She told me that if you want to be a writer, you have to write and write and write and write. And so when I was in high school, I was given the opportunity to write 17 plays.
VAVREK: I wrote 17 plays in my three years of high school. I do think that you get better by doing it. So number one, write a libretto and then have it be really bad and learn from it. And write a second libretto and a third libretto and a fourth libretto. You learn by doing. But one of the main jobs of the librettist is to be the first architect. My job is to create the initial blueprint. I’m sort of defining the space, the contours, the nuances of how things are going to move. I’m trying to figure out how to get as many different combinations of singers singing together. I want to make sure that it’s not four arias for the lead soprano in a row. There are obviously going to be moments where the composer is going to come in and say, “Oh, I found a really exciting musical idea,” that necessitates you either cutting text or reformatting text. So you’re making preliminary decisions that are there to inspire your collaborator, but are sort of open for discussion and modification to service the music.
SAUNDERS: And you have such a beautiful relationship with Missy that that must be a special part of this as well.
VAVREK: Missy and I have been working together since 2009, and we’re so in sync with each other’s artistic ideas. The things that excite Missy routinely get me really excited as well. We’ve lived so much of our lives in collaboration that it’s just getting richer and richer as we move forward in our careers.
SAUNDERS: One of the real delights of this has been watching you two work together, and it’s taught me so much about the role of trust and affection in collaboration.
VAVREK: We want to empower each other to do our best work. That’s the number one collaborative principle. So if that means that my work has to be modified to get the best and most exciting idea out of my collaborator, that’s the spirit with which I come forward.
SAUNDERS: When I first met you guys, the thing that became evident was that there just seemed to be no ego going on, except the best kind—true artistic ego, which is artistic pride. Even at this stage where you’re in rehearsals, is there still collaboration going on or is it locked in place at this point?
VAVREK: The Met is such a giant machine, and the rehearsal process is fast and furious. It is truly remarkable. You almost get whiplash looking at different corners of the room where so many different pockets of people are working, and you have people who are working at the absolute top of their craft and their game. So I have no worry that we’re going to get across the finish line. I’ve never worked and seen a team come together with such a breakneck speed and with a joint sense of purpcose. So that means that there’s not tons of time to make surgical changes. The nine months I worked with Paul Cremo, every week we were meeting and doing new drafts of the piece. But when Missy started composing, we had our piano vocal workshop, and we had our orchestral workshop. We had all of the opportunities to really get in and massage the work and make sure that we were ready for this fast and furious rehearsal process. But with all that said, we are changing a few. Missy added a few bars of music to support Liliana’s staging a couple days ago. I changed a “the” to a “his” yesterday.
SAUNDERS: That’s big stuff. Okay, the kid who wrote the 17 plays in school, what was operating in him that was looking for a home at that point?
VAVREK: I was born on a grain farm in Northern Alberta, Canada, and the access to storytelling began with books, but then through independent cinema. It completely blew my mind. It was movies like Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier, and the cinema of Atom Egoyan and Catherine Breillat that completely changed the way I looked at the world and made me want to tell really provocative stories. So I thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and I got a film degree, but I missed being in the theatrical rehearsal room. So musical theater seemed like absolutely the right direction. And immediately after that, I did the American Lyric Theaters Composer Librettist Development Program where I had those first opportunities to collaborate with classical composers, and that’s really what changed my life. And then when David T. Little and I presented our excerpts from the opera that would become Dog Days , Missy came. It was this string of really amazing encounters that led me to have this very strange career that I am so, so, so lucky to have had.
SAUNDERS: That you have earned. Can you remember any details from your first meeting with Missy?
VAVREK: It was at Carnegie Hall, and she had a flyer for a presentation of the opera song from The Uproar , and she said, “Oh, come and see this little show that I’m doing at Galapagos Art Space.” We went out for lunch about a week later, and she said, “I’m not a librettist. I’ve written the text for this first chunk, but I would really love to have somebody come on board and help me complete it.” And you don’t say no to Missy Mazzoli.
SAUNDERS: You don’t, actually. I had a similar lunch with her. You do have such a beautiful tendency to say yes, both personally with people and artistically. You give permission for people to be their best selves, to err on the side of openness. Did that come from your parents?
VAVREK: When I was three or two, my mom would take stories that I would tell and she would write them down and put them in this sort of dream box. Even then, I was encouraged to be a storyteller.
VAVREK: Then I was involved in the community theater, but my teacher in high school who ran the drama program basically said, “We have very little money, but you can have it. We will do whatever you write.” So I was given this canvas with which to tell some pretty crazy ideas. One of my first plays that I did in the 11th grade was called “Small Sad Saccharin Sins,” about a little person sent to death in New York City. I went to a Catholic high school too, and it ended with the phrase, “Die, you stumpy little fucker.” At the time, I was very brazen, but my high school allowed me to go to Provincials and actually say that.
SAUNDERS: On opening night, what’s the state of your mind? Are you at that point still evaluating or are you open to the pleasure of it?
VAVREK: You are open to the pleasure of it as much as humanly possible, but your adrenaline is running so high that to enjoy anything seems a little bit at odds with the actual sensation you’re experiencing. It seems like it’s going to be a complete celebrity and family and friend parade, parade of personalities.
VAVREK: But also you do breathe with your cast. They feel like extensions of us. We put these little black symbols on pages and then they somehow make art and life out of them. You understand where the crazy technical moments are where you just need to get through them and hope that they work in the way that they’re intended. But yeah, the score is closed. You’re not thinking of the infelicities, if there are any, you’re thinking of the journey.
SAUNDERS: I can’t wait. I was thinking about when we were in Chautauqua in that audience and something happened to me that has never happened to me in a theater before, which was some form of breaking the fourth wall. I could feel people had stopped seeing an opera and they had started investigating these questions of death as it pertains to them. So what’s next and how do you transition out of this big public moment into the next project?
VAVREK: It is exhausting, but we’re never going to be this young again. I’m actually going straight into a production of one of my first operas, Dog Days . We’re doing the Canadian premiere of it up at my company in Toronto Against the Grain. It opens three or four days after we close. Also, Du Yun is writing a follow-up to our opera Angels Bone that will premiere in Amsterdam next March. I haven’t been writing over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to be present.
SAUNDERS: I love that about you and Missy, the way you handle work energy, which is that celebratory “say yes” experience. I’ve learned so much from it and I’m grateful to you.
VAVREK: It’s crazy that George Saunders is asking me questions. I feel like you have all of the creative wisdom that I could ever want.
SAUNDERS: One thing I’ve learned in my life is if you run into a master, ask some questions. I can’t wait to see you next week.
VAVREK: I cannot wait to give you a big, big, big hug.
SAUNDERS: Yes, sir. You’re a source of so much light in my life and I really love you.
SAUNDERS: I’m going to stop recording now, so don’t say anything good after this.
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