GEOFF BENNETT: An acclaimed novel comes to life as a new opera exploring a deeply personal side of one of America's most consequential presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and the profound grief that shaped his life.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown takes us to the Metropolitan Opera in New York for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: A young boy seemingly alone in a cemetery at night, a real burial ground, but also a fantastical world of ghosts.

We're in the bardo, a Tibetan word for a space between our world and whatever comes next.

What, composer Missy Mazzoli asked herself, does that sound like?

MISSY MAZZOLI, Composer: It's sunset in the cemetery and the ghosts are sort of waking up.

So you hear this kind of cacophony.

And, musically, there are kazoos that some of the chorus members are playing.

They're talking, they're chatting, and, of course, they're singing.

JEFFREY BROWN: Wait a minute.

Kazoos are not typically heard on the stage here, right?

(LAUGHTER) MISSY MAZZOLI: Not typically.

I really wanted to start this opera with a sound that signaled to the audience that this was not going to be a typical opera and that we were not quite in reality.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now Mazzoli and her longtime collaborator, librettist Royce Vavrek, are debuting their new opera, "Lincoln in the Bardo," on the grandest of all stages, New York's Metropolitan Opera.

ROYCE VAVREK, Librettist: It's what we dream of as young opera creators.

JEFFREY BROWN: So this is big for you too.

ROYCE VAVREK: This is huge.

MISSY MAZZOLI: This is the biggest, the biggest thing we have ever done, yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: We joined rehearsals, conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin working through the score with the Met Orchestra.

MISSY MAZZOLI: Since we're not hearing the pitch, maybe you just stay on the C sharp.

MAN: The whole time?

MISSY MAZZOLI: Yes.

MAN: That's very helpful because the G and the G sharp are... JEFFREY BROWN: With Mazzoli close at hand offering guidance.

Meanwhile, Royce Vavrek was in the main hall, as the cast and creative team figured out all the moving parts on stage, including pyrotechnics.

The opera is adapted from the acclaimed 2017 novel by George Saunders, winner of the Booker Prize, which he based on real events in 1862, when, in the midst of the Civil War and its growing carnage, a grieving Abraham Lincoln visited at a crypt in Washington, D.C.

's Oak Hill Cemetery that held the body of his 11-year-old son, Willie, who died of typhoid fever.

Nine years ago, Saunders spoke of his book on the "News Hour."

GEORGE SAUNDERS, Author, "Lincoln in the Bardo": When I first heard the story about Lincoln, I -- it was so beautiful to me and sorrowful and gorgeous that my mantra was kind of just make the ending so -- make the book so weird and beautiful that it would do some justice to that emotional core.

JEFFREY BROWN: Weird in the sense that, in both novel and opera, these are ghosts who feel and act very human.

They don't even know they're dead, emotional in the sense that the loss and intense grief are very real.

President Lincoln is the only living character we meet, and his pain is boundless.

Here he sits side by side with his dead son, the two once so close now unable to connect directly.

ROYCE VAVREK: It is the story of Lincoln's grief.

He's drenched in mourning.

His 11-year-old son has passed.

And yet George has found this really beautiful, effervescent, often extremely funny world of ghosts with which he tells the story.

JEFFREY BROWN: The Met added to the fun with a preview of the opera, working with the wonderfully named arts group Death of Classical, musicians and performers amid elaborate crypts and tombs within Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, which dates back to 1838.

For her part, composer Missy Mazzoli is also a certified end-of-life doula, someone who works with individuals and families through the dying process, offering emotional and other kinds of support.

MISSY MAZZOLI: It really affected how I wrote for these characters.

What struck me was just that the things people hold on to and cling to in the moments before they pass or in the weeks and months before they pass are always so unexpected.

JEFFREY BROWN: That's captured in this passage in which characters, ghosts, sing of the little things in life they cling to.

MISSY MAZZOLI: It's not career.

It's not fame.

It's none of that.

It's a piece of rug tuft, it's beer froth, it's a gaggle of children in a snowstorm, it's just these little images that tether us to life and that we end up cherishing at the end.

And that really resonated with my experience of working with dying people.

JEFFREY BROWN: Director Lileana Blain-Cruz, a veteran theater director working on her second opera here, had the task of creating an on-stage world somewhere between life and the afterworld.

Fortunately, she says: LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ, Director: I love liminal spaces.

I love the in-between.

JEFFREY BROWN: The middle, between and -- yes.

LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ: Betwixt, between.

Where are we?

What is -- what is this?

What are we experiencing?

What is life like?

How do we wrestle inside of that?

And so part of the thing that I work with, with designers is thinking about like, OK, what has the essence of what is real and tangible, and then how do we offset that?

Like, what do we do to kind of elevate or create the surreal quality of it?

JEFFREY BROWN: One thing she had going for her, at the Metropolitan Opera, everything is big.

Puppet designer James Ortiz did his thing to add to the surreal.

You have got puppets.

LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ: That's right.

That's right.

JEFFREY BROWN: You have got a horse.

LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ: We went through this idea of like, OK, great, we have James on the team.

Is the horse a puppet?

And we went down that pathway, and it's like, no, the horse can't be a puppet.

Lincoln is real.

His horse has to be real.

So it's like, hello, Met, we need a horse.

JEFFREY BROWN: She got her horse, but everyone involved knows the stakes are enormously high for the Metropolitan Opera, which has serious financial woes and needs hits, and for opera itself, which still wrestles with the risks of staging new works like this one.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), Mayor of New York City: Welcome to a night at the opera.

JEFFREY BROWN: As it happens, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently announced a plan to give away 70,000 seats at The Met this season by lottery to anyone who hasn't attended an opera since at least 2018.

And composer Missy Mazzoli, who spent a career seeking to make opera feel more open and welcome to all, heard about it in an unexpected place.

MISSY MAZZOLI: I was just on the subway this morning and people were talking about it.

So this is something that goes beyond... JEFFREY BROWN: You were on the subway this morning.

MISSY MAZZOLI: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: As was I. MISSY MAZZOLI: The A Train.

JEFFREY BROWN: And on your train, they were talking about opera?

MISSY MAZZOLI: Opera and this initiative by the mayor to offer free tickets.

And the guy across from me said: "Oh, I went to one opera in 2019, but now I really want to go back.

Do you think I'm eligible?"

And I'm like: "Talk to the mayor.

I don't know."

(LAUGHTER) MISSY MAZZOLI: But it was just -- I was like, oh, my God, I'm on the subway, and we're all talking about opera.

This is extraordinary.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now on stage, "Lincoln in the Bardo" has performances through November 14.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.