NEW YORK (AP) — The children crumple and fall to the stage, victims of King Herod’s assassins. Then the Virgin Mary, in a voice brimming with anguish and outrage, memorializes the student protesters who were massacred by Mexican armed forces in 1968.

This is “El Nino,” a retelling of the birth and early life of Jesus through a mix of biblical verses and modern Latin American poetry, medieval texts and apocrypha.

Set to music by John Adams from a libretto compiled by him and Peter Sellars, it is having its Metropolitan Opera premiere nearly a quarter-century after it was first performed in Paris in 2000.

“It contains some of John’s greatest music,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said. “But I had always thought of it as an oratorio,” along the lines of Handel’s “Messiah.” That changed, he said, when he met with Lileana Blain-Cruz, resident director of Lincoln Center Theater, who told him ”her dream was to stage it as a fully realized production.”