The soaring oratorio El Niño by John Adams, one of the leading composers of his generation, had its Australian premiere at the 2002 Adelaide Festival in a landmark production directed by Peter Sellars.

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered is a new chamber adaptation of this monumental work, featuring Grammy Award-winning singer Julia Bullock. Hailed as “intimate, affecting and quietly rich with activism” (The New York Times), this distilled rendering centres the maternal voice within what has historically been delivered as a patriarchal narrative.

Arranged by Christian Reif, with a cross-cultural libretto compiled by Peter Sellars, the voices of women and Latin American poets come to the fore, exploring the tension between new life and the reality of suffering and sacrifice.