''El Niño'' is an opera- oratorio by the contemporary American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White, the vocal ensemble

Theatre of Voices Theatre of Voices is a vocal ensemble founded by baritone Paul Hillier in 1990;www.paulhillier.net
. Retrieved March 9, 2 ...

(consisting of

countertenor A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G3 to D5 or E5, although a sopranist (a s ...

s Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Steven Rickards), the London Voices, La Maîtrise de Paris, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

. Described as a " nativity oratorio", it retells the Christmas story, with the first half focusing on Mary's thoughts before the birth in the stable in Bethlehem, and the second half covering the aftermath of the birth, Herod's slaughter of the Holy Innocents, and the early life of Jesus. The text follows the traditional biblical story but also incorporates text from the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

, the Wakefield Mystery Plays, Martin Luther's Christmas Sermon, the Gospel of Luke, and several gnostic gospels from the Apocrypha. Also included are poems by Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, Rubén Darío, librettist Peter Sellars, and Adams himself. He also quotes Gabriela Mistral's "The Christmas Star" and incorporates a choral setting of "" by Hildegard von Bingen.''El Niño''
earbox.com (John Adams' website)

Performers

The work is scored for

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C ...

and

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the r ...

soloists, a trio of

s, a forty-five piece orchestra (including two guitars and a

sampling keyboard A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument which uses sound recordings (or " samples") of real instrument sounds (e.g., a piano, violin, trumpet, or other synthesizer), excerpts from recorded songs (e.g., a five-second bass guita ...

), SATB chorus, and a children's chorus. It can be performed either as a staged production or as a concert oratorio. The original semi-staged production by Peter Sellars includes dance and film elements. A shortened version of the work, removing two of the three countertenors and the chorus as well as much of the orchestra, was suggested by soprano Julia Bullock in 2018 for a performance at The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the title ''El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered''.

Performance history

The American premiere took place on January 11, 2001 at

Davies Hall Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall is the concert hall component of the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. The 2,743-seat hall was completed in 1980 at a cost of US$28 million to give the San Francis ...

, San Francisco, with Kent Nagano conducting the

San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Fr ...

and San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Piedmont Children's Choir, and with the same soloists as at the Paris premiere. It received its collegiate premiere as a semi-staged oratorio on November 6, 2002, at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, conducted by Carmen Helena Téllez, with student soloists Su-Hyoun Kim, Hannah Penn and Robert Samels, but also including the professional countertenors of the premiere, Dan Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Steve Rickards, members of Theater of Voices and alumni of the School. The artistic director of Theater of Voices, Paul Hillier was at the time a faculty member of the School. It was also given in New York at the

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

in March 2003 by the

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...

under Esa-Pekka Salonen, and with the same soloists. In May 2003 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed the work under the direction of Robert Spano and the following month opened the 67th Ravinia Festival with a critically acclaimed performance of the oratorio. A new and highly praised production, using puppets instead of dancers and film, was given at Spoleto Festival USA in May 2014, directed by

John La Bouchardière John La Bouchardière is a British opera, film and television director. Biography La Bouchardière was a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford, studied at the University of Birmingham and was a staff director at English National Opera. He also spe ...

and featured the Westminster Choir, directed by Joe Miller.

Musical sections

''El Niño'' is approximately two hours long, comprises two sections, and is subdivided further into thirteen sub-sections as follows:

Recordings

*2000: DVD video: Sellars' Paris production of ''El Niño'' with Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Willard White; conductor: Kent Nagano. Arthaus Musik, Cat #101669 *2001: 2-CD recording of original cast from the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. Nonesuch Records, Cat #79634-2"John Adams: ''El Niño''"
on nonesuch.com

References

External links