El Niño (music)
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El Niño is a nativity oratorio by the American minimalist composer John Coolidge Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000 by the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra, the London Voices, the Theater of Voices, La Maitresse de Paris and soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White, with Kent Nagano conducting.
El Niño is composed of two sections and is approximately two hours long. Besides a forty-five piece orchestra (which includes two guitars and a sampling keyboard), SATB chorus, and children’s chorus, the work calls for six solo voices, including a soprano, mezzo soprano, bass baritone, and three countertenors. The work can be performed either as a fully staged production or as a concert oratorio. The fully staged production piece includes dance and film elements created by Peter Sellars.
The oratorio follows the traditional biblical story of the birth of Jesus but incorporates poetry from a wide range of sources. Included are poems by Rosario Castellanos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Gabriela Mistral, and Rubén Dario. The work also includes selected passages from the Wakefield Mystery Play, Martin Luther’s Christmas Sermon, the Gospel of Luke, and several "gnostic" gospels from the Apocrypha. John Adams also quotes Gabriela Mistral’s "The Christmas Star" and a choral setting of "O quam preciosa" by Hildegard von Bingen.
There is also a DVD video of Sellars' Paris production of El Niño.
El Niño is subdivided further into thirteen arias as follows:
[edit] Part 1
- I Sing Of A Maiden
- Hail, Mary, Gracious!
- La Anunciación
- For With God No Thing Shall Be Impossible
- The Babe Leaped In Her Womb
- Magnificat
- Now She Was Sixteen Years Old
- Joseph's Dream
- Shake The Heavens
- Se Habla De Gabriel
- The Christmas Star
[edit] Part 2
- Pues Mi Dios Ha Nacido A Penar
- When Herod Heard
- Woe Unto Them That Call Evil Good
- And The Star Went Before Them
- The Three Kings
- And When They Were Departed
- Dawn Air
- And He Slew All The Children
- Memorial De Tiatelolco
- In The Day Of The great Slaughter
- Pues Está Tritando
- Jesus And The Dragons
- A Palm Tree
