oratorio

Long a fan of John Adams and his collaborations with the director-librettist Peter Sellars, Blain-Cruz particularly loved their 2000 oratorio “El Niño,” a blending of the Nativity story with ancient and modern texts, like poetry by Rosario Castellanos and Gabriela Mistral.

“But I had always thought of it as an oratorio,” along the lines of Handel’s “Messiah.”

“My soul’s above the sea and whistling a dream,” he sang, a passage from the Nativity oratorio “El Niño” by John Adams, in which Tines makes his Met debut this month.

While the oratorio’s story is fictional, it is based on the true story of 20,000 to 30,000 Jews who reached the Shanghai International Settlement.

“Originally Long and I talked about doing this as an opera. Certain extraneous issues, it just turned into an oratorio,” Zigman said, referring to the cost of a full staging.