Adams: El Nino. (Opera And Oratorio).(Review)

Upshaw, Hunt Lieberson; White; London Voices, Theater of Voices, Maitrise de Paris, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Nagano. Text and translation. Nonesuch 79634

Few oratorios, old or new, speak with the immediacy of the John Adams-Peter Sellars collaboration El Nino. The texts, covering the events of the Annunciation, Nativity and flight from Herod into Egypt, were taken by Sellars and Adams from a variety of sources. Bible verses rub up against the recent work of Latino poets (including four highly sensual poems by Rosaria Castellanos); in the final movement of Part I, "The Christmas Star," Hildegard von Bingen's "O quam preciosa" is superimposed on a shocking poem by Gabriela Mistral. There is corresponding juxtaposition of old and new in the musical forces. Adams first seems to be writing a Bachian passion, with the chorus as the people, a soprano soloist as Mary, and countertenors as evangelists and the angel Gabriel, alongside a mezzo soloist for the modern poetry in Spanish. But toward the end of Part I, in the first of El Nino's many transporting moments, the soprano -- who has previously sung a Magnificat as Mary -- suddenly begins one of the Castellanos poems. The blurring of the division of labor among the performers and of the breaks between movements makes the presentation of the familiar story a communal, freshly universal event.

Adams handles the forces with supreme, powerful confidence. The opening of Part II, "Pues mi dios ha nacido a penar," is a theological discussion between mezzo and chorus over a slowly spinning nocturne flecked with sounds of nature. Mary's Magnificat is womanly and personal; the gradual widening of the intervals she sings helps the range of expression expand until she trustingly and graphically sinks into rapture. Many of the movements end with carefully orchestrated passages of trills and repeated notes, which we come to identify with miracles. Adams repeatedly keeps the story fresh by reminding us just how terrifying these events would have been when they happened out of nowhere. The sequence that ends Part I, with the soprano and mezzo soloists ...