Perfect storm of an opera

Friday night, Peter Schickele took a break from presenting the inexcusable music of the ne’er-do-well P.D.Q. Bach at the Walt Disney Concert Hall to point out an oversight by The Times.

I’m not sure how it happened, but we neglected to list a performance of an important John Adams opera. You know, it’s the one about the 37th president who visits a famous porcelain factory that makes dinnerware with portraits of presidents. When he saw his own likeness, he just couldn’t help himself and began eating it, the actual plate.

The opera, of course, is “China in Nixon,” conducted by Esa-Pekka-Picked-a-Pack-of-Pickled-Peppers.

Sorry, folks. But Professor Schickele isn’t infallible either. He called us the Los Angeles Tribune, for heaven’s sake. And at least we were at Disney Hall on Friday morning for the Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of Adams’ “El Nino.” Maestro Peppers was no doubt already pickled, so Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted.

“El Nino” is Adams’ nativity opera/oratorio that functions as a “Messiah” for the modern age. It was fully staged by Peter Sellars at the Paris premiere five years ago, and that staging was also used by the Philharmonic for its superb performances in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 2003.

Some complained of Sellars’ distracting politicization of Christmas -- the Holy family are streetwise Latinos camping out at Dockweiler Beach. Sellars’ activist context added an extraordinary immediacy, whereas the work, on-its-unstaged own Friday, becomes more contemplative.

There is, however, inherent drama in the texts that Adams and Sellars chose. Texts in “El Nino” come from a variety of sources, the most striking of which being by Latin American women -- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Rosario Castellanos and Gabriela Mistral. Adams wanted not only the Spanish language to pervade “El Nino” but also a woman’s point of view that is typically neglected in biblical narratives.

Adams also turned to the noncanonical texts known as the Apocrypha, to bring in some credible psychology, such as Joseph’s initial burst of anger in learning of Mary’s pregnancy. Against such anger, it becomes all the more touching when Adams lets his sense of wonder roam. The Apocrypha gave him the account of baby Jesus taming dragons and politely instructing a high tree to bow down and present its fruit to refresh his mother in the parched desert.

“El Nino” benefits greatly from Disney’s acoustics. Adams’ exquisitely delicate instrumental colors are easily swallowed up in the opera pit. But there was also the potential Disney pitfall of amplifying the singers, which the composer insists upon. A Christmas gift to its audience, the Philharmonic managed this with near naturalness.

Dawn Upshaw and Willard White, for whom Adams wrote the soprano and bass solos, were once more on hand. Upshaw did something interesting.

Perhaps to compensate for the missing staging, she seemed to darken her voice more than usual in her cathartic aria, “Memorial de Tlatelolco,” Castellanos’ evocation of the social breakdown in the 1968 student riots in Mexico City. She then brightened up again when she joined three countertenors to sing Jesus and the dragons.

There is a great range of expression in Adams’ music, and he finds exactly the right tone and technique, be it cheery, chirpy minimalism or anguished chromaticism, to fit the text. One revelation is that Joseph is more imposing than gentle, and White was once more a riveting, powerful presence.

Michelle DeYoung took the mezzo-soprano part created for Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. If DeYoung has not yet made this music her own, it is no small compliment to say that I heard Hunt Lieberson in her velvet-toned singing of “Pues mi Dios, ha Nacido a Penar” (Because my Lord was born to suffer), the aria by the 17th century poet Sor Juana that opens Part 2 of “El Nino.”

The three precise countertenors were Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Paul Flight. The Master Chorale supplied tight choral contribution. Salonen had a chamber-sized Philharmonic playing with bite. At the end, the Los Angeles Children’s chorus walked down the two sides of the stage, sang, all sweetness and light, of the palm tree, their hands swaying -- the only remnant of Sellars’ staging.

What makes “El Nino” a useful modern “Messiah” is that it humanizes religion by celebrating the miracle of birth, every birth.

And its warmth had not left the premises Friday night when the other half of the Philharmonic showed up for “P.D.Q. Bach: The Vegas Years.” Schickele is well known as a comic genius. But he is also a musical genius. Everything is a joke (and some are real groaners). But, as with Adams, everything is more than one thing.

And Schickele included a P.D.Q. oratorio, “Oedipus Tex.” At the end, after a recitative describing Oedipus plucking out his eyes and then sort of regretting it, the orchestra plays the opening of Bach’s “May Sheep Safely Graze.” Some bars are repeated, with the harmony and rhythms thrown off in a manner not all that dissimilar from Adams in his minimalist mode.

Over the Bach, Schickele, the feisty “off-coloratura” soprano Michele Eaton and “tenor profundo” David Dusing sang “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” One didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or simply marvel in the delicious cleverness of it all. This is a musical miracle too.

Joana Carneiro, the Philharmonic’s young conducting fellow, was at the podium. She was exhilarating.