El Nino

Composer: Adams, John

Librettist/Text Author: Adams, John

Librettist/Text Author: Sellars, Peter

Conductor: Nagano, Kent

Orchestra: Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra

Chorus: Theatre of Voices

Chorus Master: Hillier, Ben

Chorus: London Voices

Chorus Master: Hillier, Ben

Chorus: Paris Maitrise Children's Choir

Chorus Master: Hillier, Ben

Baritone: White, Willard

Mezzo-soprano: Hunt Lieberson, Lorraine

Soprano: Upshaw, Dawn

Stage Director: Sellars, Peter

Television Director: Maniura, Peter

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Venue: Theatre du Chatelet, Paris

Playing Time: 01:59:05

Catalogue Number: MID13245226

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The most recent composition by American minimalist composer John Adams is his take on the "Christmas Oratorio": a large-scale music theatre work entitled El Nino.

How does one actually celebrate Christ's birth in a land where palm trees and race conflicts flourish - in sunny California? Perhaps the way composer John Adams and director Peter Sellars portray it at the beginning of El Nino (La Nativite), which was first performed nine days before Christmas 2000 at the Parisian Theatre du Chatelet: with a tree and festoons of lights. This symbol projected on the stage as a hazily poetic yet realistically blurred video is telling in more ways than one.

This fourth joint stage work by Adams and Sellars - which unlike the two operas Nixon in China (1987) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) turns to a Biblical rather than a contemporary theme - uses musical elements we are already familiar with from these two artists' three "worldly" pieces.