Video: Meet the Creative Team of The Met's EL NIÑO

Watch as ahead of the Met premiere of El Niño, composer John Adams discusses his acclaimed opera-oratorio and director Lileana Blain-Cruz describes her vibrant new production.

"What's amazing about John Adams' El Nino is that it takes these themes and then it multiplies them, it complicates them. The show is in English and in Spanish and in Latin... It incorporates like poems from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and so you get a sense of like not just like the nativity story on the biblical level but you understand it as women, the Journey of birthing life into the world. I think, specifically, what I was really moved by in their stories or that feels particularly exciting to me is this idea of migration, the idea of danger, the idea of the journey itself, and the focus on Mary. Mary is the center of the story... said director Lileana Blain-Cruz.

Eminent American composer John Adams returns to the Met after a decade-long hiatus for the company premiere of his acclaimed opera-oratorio, which incorporates sacred and secular texts in English, Spanish, and Latin, from biblical times to the present day, in an extraordinarily dramatic retelling of the Nativity. 

El Niño brings together three of contemporary opera’s fiercest champions, all of whom make highly anticipated company debuts: Marin Alsop, one of the great conductors of our time, who has led more than 200 new-music premieres; soprano Julia Bullock, a leading voice on and off stage; and pathbreaking bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Radiant mezzo-sopranos J’Nai Bridges and Daniela Mack take turns completing the principal trio.

The moving, fully-staged new production also marks the Met debut of Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director at Lincoln Center Theater, who received universal acclaim for her Tony-nominated 2022 production of The Skin of Our Teeth.

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