Marin Alsop, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new principal guest conductor, makes her Met debut

NEW YORK — Renowned for its extravagant theatrical spectacles, the Metropolitan Opera layered one entrancing scenic element onto another in John Adams’ nativity piece El Niño at the Tuesday opening of its new production — and to a perfectly delighted audience.

The cast-of-hundreds pageant had a full chorus, children’s chorus, star soloists, puppeteers, palm trees rolling in from the sides, singing messengers lowered down from the heavens with changing skies, and landscapes in deeply saturated colors.

But the performer who received the most applause at the end was conductor Marin Alsop in her Met debut. Though New Yorkers claims her as a native daughter, this recently appointed principal guest conductor of (and frequent visitor to) the Philadelphia Orchestra was, sentiment aside, responsible for establishing a rock-solid foundation for Adams’ long, eventful score that conjures endless varieties of extra-worldly sound. Alsop did that — and the music was never upstaged by what is certainly among the Met’s most visually dynamic productions.

When El Niño premiered in 2000, Adams was then known for writing “CNN operas” based on recent news events. New dimensions opened up with this opera-oratorio. It had a Peter Sellars libretto, wasn’t strong on plot (like Handel’s Messiah), with a compilation of mostly Spanish and English texts — both Biblical and modern with poets such as Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974).

Adams’ orchestra-heavy, post-minimalist score portrays Christ’s birth as a seismic historic event, followed by King Herod’s genocide. Slashing orchestra gestures echo Bernard Herrmann’s film score in Psycho. But the music also conveys “days of miracle and wonder” (to quote songwriter Paul Simon) with shimmering climaxes unlike anything Adams has written before or since.

The original Peter Sellars production had gritty film footage shot in Southern California, with compassionate correlations between the flight of the Holy Family and the plight of Latin American migrants. This second-generation production by Lileana Blain-Cruz doesn’t go there — and somewhat takes the teeth out of the piece — but falls easily into the genre of magic realism. This is evident especially in the first act with nights that have a thousand eyes (well, at least a few dozen) and dreamlike vistas (including an oceangoing lifeboat having a bumpy ride) that didn’t explicitly tell the story but underscored it with poetic atmosphere.

With its better-defined plot lines, the second act was staged more traditionally, with baritone Davóne Tines impressively shape-shifting from playing an irate Joseph (understandably baffled when wife Mary has a virgin pregnancy) to murder-prone King Herod.

Tines had music and diction well in hand. But amid stage activity that rivals Cirque de Soleil (including some clashing dragon puppets), is it any surprise that his high-caliber costars J’Nai Bridges and Julia Bullock (who has particularly championed El Niño in recent years) struggled with finding precise expression in their vocal lines? Or that choral details were smudged? Vocal writing — at least in this piece — isn’t Adams’ strongest skill.

But Alsop had Adams’ orchestrally virtuosic score locking into place at every turn. Like Ravel, Adams’ music seems deceptively effortless when done well but reveals its serious challenges when not. As with Alsop’s recent disc of Adams orchestral pieces (works include Fearful Symmetries on the Naxos label), she and the great Metropolitan Opera Orchestra felt the music’s propulsion without ever seeming mechanical, navigated all hair-trigger turns, revealed passages that are meant to sound medieval, and fused it all with a keen sense of overall connection.

Alsop, now 67, has had a long road to the Met. Now here, she delivered.

“El Niño” plays in repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera through May 17. Tickets: $37-$490. Information: www.metopera.org or 212-362-6000.