Met Opera Streams 'Lincoln in the Bardo' Free on YouTube

All nine performances of the Metropolitan Opera's world premiere of "Lincoln in the Bardo" sold out this fall, and on Saturday the company will stream the final performance free on YouTube — the first time it has put an entire opera on the platform.

The stream will be available on the Met's YouTube channel, which has 336,000 subscribers and is normally used for promotion, through Nov. 18. The opera, with a score by Missy Mazzoli and a libretto by Royce Vavrek, is based on George Saunders's 2017 novel and is the first Met world premiere of a work written by a woman.

Why YouTube, and not cinemas?

The Met had not scheduled "Lincoln" for its Live in HD series, which simulcasts productions to 1,900 cinemas in 53 countries. The season calendar and the sprawling cast's schedules made added performances impossible. The YouTube stream filled the gap.

"We are really excited that people are getting to see it for free across the country and around the world, as well as people who wanted to see it again and couldn't get tickets," said Paul Cremo, director of the Met's opera commissioning program. "There's a lot of interest in it."

The transmission costs $1 million, covered by Met donors. A technical rehearsal on Wednesday night required eight cameras in the hall and a line of big rigs along Amsterdam Avenue, one housing a master control room with 12 people, including general manager Peter Gelb.

What does the stream change for the Met's finances?

Nothing directly. The channel is free, so a company facing financial strain earns no revenue from it. Live in HD broadcasts, by contrast, sold an average of 100,000 tickets each and produced $3 million in the 2024-25 season, according to Gillian Brierley, the Met's assistant general manager for marketing and communications. The Met's last streaming came during the pandemic, when it posted archive Live in HD recordings on its website.

The company is converting the stream into a fund-raising tool: an onscreen appeal tied to its $1.5 billion campaign lets viewers contribute from $1, with the option to disable the button.

"This is unknown territory," Gelb said. "We haven't done something quite as populist, in terms of free programming to a mass audience, since the pandemic. I don't know how many people will watch it."

The cameras also forced staging adjustments. The dummy depicting Willie Lincoln in his coffin needed to look lifelike on the small screen, so the Met cast rubber replicas of the head and hands of Everett Sobers, the 12-year-old singer who plays Willie.

A changing audience for new work

Since the pandemic the Met has presented 17 operas by living composers, including two world premieres: the staged version of Kevin Puts's "The Hours" and "Lincoln." New operas have sold about 10 percent more seats per performance than traditional repertory works. Mason Bates's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" and Gabriela Lena Frank's "El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego" sold strongly; Kaija Saariaho's "Innocence" and Jeanine Tesori's "Grounded" did not.

"The audience has changed," Cremo said. "I have been here 21 years. I have seen a real sea change in the sea of white-haired heads out in the audience. And there are a lot of young people who have grown up on cool indie films and TV. They are narratively very sophisticated. They are interested in diversity. And they want to see a world that reflects the world that they are living in."

Revivals are not guaranteed either: "The Hours" and Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" fell short of their first runs on return. But Gelb said "Kavalier," "Frida" and "Lincoln" will be revived, and Saunders's promotion of the opera — plus a Dua Lipa video to be shown during Saturday's intermission — has fueled demand.

"I'm thrilled that it's selling so well," Gelb said. "A new work — you never know until the curtain comes down and the audience reacts."

Whether Saturday's viewership justifies a permanent free-streaming strand is the question Gelb says he cannot yet answer; the watch count, which the Met has not projected, will decide how far this experiment travels.