El Nino
Crowley, Paul
MUSIC Paul Crowley WHAT CHILD IS THIS? John Adams's 'El Nino' John Adams's oratorio, El Nino, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, debuted in Paris in 2000. Like the...
...White's rich bass serves these parts well...
...Happily this hyperactivity has been tempered in the DVD version of the Paris production (ArtHaus Musik), where the various elements are blended into a coherent audio and visual experience...
...It is sung by a chorus of children whose arms wave like palm fronds in the wind...
...Both Paris and San Francisco productions were directed by Peter Sellars, the (in)famous opera wizard whose shows have often stirred controversy because of visual overload...
...El Nino refashions the story as the drama of a young Latino girl and her boyfriend in contemporary Los Angeles...
...Mary, Joseph, and the Child are symbols for every woman, every man, every child...
...The work of Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos, framed by Adams's choice of the minor key, arrests us in the way that Rilke does in his Mary poems...
...Music, film, and dance all serve as instruments of theological understanding...
...When Mary visits Elizabeth in a laundromat, both the sacred and the secular are explored in new ways...
...Adams draws on a variety of texts, including Scripture, apocryphal gospels, and the writings of Sor Juana de la Cruz, Hildegard of Bingen, and several contemporary Mexican poets...
...El Nino has two parts...
...When I saw El Nino in San Francisco in 2001, what really startled me was how far it pushed the customary bounds of the oratorio genre...
...In El Nino, the Sellars touch is unmistakable: the massive chorus is in street clothes and dancers periodically perform on a small stage in front of the orchestra...
...Mary addresses the yet-to-be-born Jesus in Spanish: "Because you were to break my bones, my bones, at your arrival, break...
...Their high-pitched voices interplay with the soft innocence of Up-shaw's soprano...
...While I was thrilled by the visual display of this unorthodox presentation, I agree with critics who said that there was simply too much to take in...
...All of this melds surprisingly well...
...The DVD provides insightful interviews with Adams, conductor Kent Nagano, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and Sellars...
...Although these lines may seem didactic, this portion of the piece provides a shocking realization of the political force of the original biblical story...
...The production ends with one of the most sublime denouements I know, another poem by Castellanos, "Una Palmera," on the legend of a palm tree that bowed to the Holy Family...
...Among contradictory angels you approach, pouring yourself like gentle music, like a glassful of balms and aromas...
...Adams uses a Castellanos poem about the 1968 massacre of Mexican University students at Tlatelolco: "Darkness engenders violence/and violence demands darkness/ to coagulate in crime...
...Who is he who has deceived me...
...The narrative is marked by intriguing musical detours...
...El Nino is the work of an essentially secular composer, which from a theological point of view, makes it all the more compelling...
...The theological scope of the oratorio is not as expansive as Handel's Messiah, which takes us from the birth of Jesus to his Resurrection and Ascension, but El Nino is, in a sense, more universal in its human reach...
...At the end of part 1, "Mary" is pictured on film attending a baby by a bonfire on a Southern California beach...
...A trio of countertenors, shadowed onstage by a trio of dancers, adds an eerie and ethereal quality, especially in the Annunciation scene...
...Paul Crowley, SJ, teaches in the religious studies department at Santa Clara University...
...El Nino is a decidedly postmodern construction, a melange of multiple personalities and perspectives...
...Bass Willard White plays Joseph, Herod, God, and the biblical narrator...
...Joseph's confusion and anger, coupled with Mary's tearful self-defense, are painful: "Mary, why did you do this...
...And here you are, announcing yourself...
...For example, the first song, "I Sing of a Maiden," is bright and even hopeful, delivered by the three countertenors, Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, and Steven Richards...
...El Nino tells of the human passage from the miracle and promise of birth to the sure fate of suffering and hardship, and finally to a newfound innocence...
...Eventually, this drama gives way to the joy of the Nativity...
...It takes us into the world outside the family where there is more suffering and loss...
...Mary has several voices and faces, performed, at various points by Upshaw, mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, a dancer, and two women in the film...
...I recommend it highly to anyone who was unable to see the production in person...
...The tone of the piece changes radically as Herod undertakes the slaughter of the innocents...
...This is an oratorio for everyone, not only for the believer...
...The second part of the oratorio is darker and more complex...
...Literally on top of all this-above and behind stage-a film is playing which parallels the drama that is unfolding onstage...
...The turbulence stirring within Mary's heart is palpable and one can almost sense it within the music...
...The first-soft and intimate-takes us from the Annunciation to the dream of Joseph and the visit of the Magi...
...His 1999 production of Peony Pavilion in Berkeley was a case in point, with several actions taking place at once, all of which appeared on television screens placed throughout the auditorium...
...on stage, Lieberson and Upshaw proclaim the good news, weaving together texts from poet Gabriela Mistral ("The Christmas Star") and mystic Hildegard of Bingen ("O quam preciosa...
...Like the much-praised La Pasion Segun San Marcos, a contemporary retelling of the Gospel of Mark by Osvaldo Goli-jov, it is not a classical work, but a boldly unconventional approach to a sacred story, in this case the Annunciation and birth of Christ...
...This is followed by a disturbing "Annunciation," sung by Lieberson, where "Mary" takes on a more mature and emotionally complex tone, suggesting an intuition of the suffering to come...
Vol. 130 • December 2003 • No. 22
