Kyle Adam Blair - pianist, new music specialist, vocal coach
Modern Opera
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Anthony Davis - Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote
KPBS feature aired 1/15/2026 |
Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote (world premiere)
(répétiteur, pit pianist, vocal coach, musical preparation)
January 17-18, 2026 / Southwestern College Performing Art Center / Chula Vista, CA
January 31, 2026 / Casa de la Cultura de Tijuana / Tijuana, BC, Mexico
adapted from the children's book by Duncan Tonatiuh
music by Anthony Davis
libretto by Allan Havis
produced by Bodhi Tree Concerts
directed by Octavio Cardenas
conducted by Christopher Rountree
featuring:
Mariana Flores-Bucio
Maya Goell
Victor Ryan Robertson
Oriana Geis-Falla
Bernardo Bermudez
Sharmay Mussachio
Walter DuMelle
Miguel Zazueta
- - -
At the U.S.-Mexico Border, a Children’s Opera Sings to the Moment
“Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote,” performed on both sides of the border, offers an allegory about migrants, immigration agents and President Trump.
The new children’s opera “Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote” is told with singers dressed up as hopping bunnies, coyotes, snakes and butterflies. In the course of 90 minutes, it chronicles a journey through deserts, a river, an underground tunnel and a wall: a border wall, lorded over by a character known as Orange Snapping Turtle.
Because while “Pancho Rabbit” might present itself as a children’s opera, it tackles some of the most polarizing events gripping the nation today. The opera, based on a children’s picture book and written in Spanish and English, recounts the story of a Mexican farmer (Papa Rabbit), who crosses the border into the United States to work on carrot and lettuce fields. His young son, Pancho Rabbit, embarks on a perilous journey to find his father, escorted by a coyote that later tries to eat him.
Its composer is Anthony Davis, who has a history of tackling politically charged and socially fraught subjects in operas like “The Central Park Five,” about five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger, and “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” “Pancho Rabbit” was presented on Saturday night at the Teatro de la Casa de la Cultura in Tijuana, Mexico, a few miles away from the busiest crossing on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The venue, a rambling brick building on a hill with a view over Tijuana, was chosen to underline the urgency of the themes that this opera addresses, albeit cloaked in the guise of a playful story for children.
“I wanted to find a way to capture the imagination of children at the same time having the subtext of what we are dealing with now,” said Davis, who also teaches just across the border at the University of California, San Diego. “With the issue of immigration and that hostility that exists toward migrants and particularly toward the Other.”
- Adam Nagourney (The New York Times)
(répétiteur, pit pianist, vocal coach, musical preparation)
January 17-18, 2026 / Southwestern College Performing Art Center / Chula Vista, CA
January 31, 2026 / Casa de la Cultura de Tijuana / Tijuana, BC, Mexico
adapted from the children's book by Duncan Tonatiuh
music by Anthony Davis
libretto by Allan Havis
produced by Bodhi Tree Concerts
directed by Octavio Cardenas
conducted by Christopher Rountree
featuring:
Mariana Flores-Bucio
Maya Goell
Victor Ryan Robertson
Oriana Geis-Falla
Bernardo Bermudez
Sharmay Mussachio
Walter DuMelle
Miguel Zazueta
- - -
At the U.S.-Mexico Border, a Children’s Opera Sings to the Moment
“Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote,” performed on both sides of the border, offers an allegory about migrants, immigration agents and President Trump.
The new children’s opera “Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote” is told with singers dressed up as hopping bunnies, coyotes, snakes and butterflies. In the course of 90 minutes, it chronicles a journey through deserts, a river, an underground tunnel and a wall: a border wall, lorded over by a character known as Orange Snapping Turtle.
Because while “Pancho Rabbit” might present itself as a children’s opera, it tackles some of the most polarizing events gripping the nation today. The opera, based on a children’s picture book and written in Spanish and English, recounts the story of a Mexican farmer (Papa Rabbit), who crosses the border into the United States to work on carrot and lettuce fields. His young son, Pancho Rabbit, embarks on a perilous journey to find his father, escorted by a coyote that later tries to eat him.
Its composer is Anthony Davis, who has a history of tackling politically charged and socially fraught subjects in operas like “The Central Park Five,” about five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger, and “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” “Pancho Rabbit” was presented on Saturday night at the Teatro de la Casa de la Cultura in Tijuana, Mexico, a few miles away from the busiest crossing on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The venue, a rambling brick building on a hill with a view over Tijuana, was chosen to underline the urgency of the themes that this opera addresses, albeit cloaked in the guise of a playful story for children.
“I wanted to find a way to capture the imagination of children at the same time having the subtext of what we are dealing with now,” said Davis, who also teaches just across the border at the University of California, San Diego. “With the issue of immigration and that hostility that exists toward migrants and particularly toward the Other.”
- Adam Nagourney (The New York Times)
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