"El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered has affirmed this company as one of high ambition and accomplishment. Wherever and whenever these artists return, attention must be paid."

Soprano Julia Bullock, compelling as ever, opened the evening with a half-spoken, half-sung “Annunciation.” “You exalt my humility,” she sang, her voice warm with innocence, over simple open string harmonies. But soon enough, in “Talk of Gabriel,” Bullock scoured up the fierce pressures of pregnancy and giving birth, the boredom and blood, “the wound of his departure,” the orchestral chords now quietly keening.