With just over a week to go before the February 2 Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams's opera Nixon in China and the Nonesuch Records reissue of the acclaimed original cast recording, Q2—the online new-music stream of New York's classical public radio station WQXR—celebrated last week with John Adams's Operatorios, a weeklong immersion in long-form works by the composer. The series proved so popular, Q2 will launch an encore presentation of the full week's programming starting today, presenting Adams's one oratorio, El Niño, and music from all four of his operas, each weeknight at 7 PM EST through Friday, January 28.
 
John Adams's Operatorios begins, fittingly, with Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, from 2006, for which the composer drew inspiration from Mozart's Magic Flute and ancient Indian folk-tales; the libretto, co-written by Adams and director Peter Sellars, is in English and Spanish. The New Yorker calls the work "opulent, dreamlike, fiercely lyrical"; the Los Angeles Times calls the Nonesuch album "a terrific recording."

On Tuesday evening, it's Adams's 2000 Nativity oratorio, El Niño, also featuring texts compiled by Adams and Sellars, who created the stage production for the original performances, starring Dawn Upshaw, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Willard White.

Doctor Atomic Symphony will be the focus of Wednesday's show. Adams based this 2007 all-instrumental work on his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. The New York Times wrote: "[T]he score invites you to hear the music—driving passages with pounding timpani, quizzically restrained lyrical flights, bursts of skittish fanfares—on its own terms, apart from its dramatic context." The first recording, on Nonesuch, features the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of David Robertson. Also on the Wednesday broadcast is Adams's 2009 orchestral piece City Noir.

Nixon in China, the inspiration for the week's series, comes on Thursday. The original cast recording of Adams's groundbreaking first opera earned a Grammy Award in 1988. The forthcoming reissue includes the original, composer-supervised recording on three CDs, plus a 68-page booklet with new notes by Adams and director Peter Sellars, along with the original liner notes by librettist Alice Goodman and by Michael Steinberg, which the Times called "a revelation." James Maddalena, who originated the role of Richard Nixon on the recording, reprises the role in the upcoming Met production.

Finally, on Friday evening, comes Adams's controversial 1990 opera The Death of Klinghoffer, also with a libretto by Goodman, which addresses the 1985 terrorist hijacking of the Achille Lauro ocean liner. Followings its 1991, Sellars–directed premiere, the New York Times said the work “transmutes contemporary history into operatic poetry.”

Tune in all week starting at 7 PM at wqxr.org. To pre-order the Nixon in China reissue and peruse the complete Adams Nonesuch catalog, visit the Nonesuch Store.