Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: children's opera staged in Tijuana tackles migration

The new children’s opera "Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote," by composer Anthony Davis and librettist Allan Havis, was presented on Saturday night at the Teatro de la Casa de la Cultura in Tijuana, Mexico, according to a Feb. 2, 2026 report. The 90-minute bilingual work, based on Duncan Tonatiuh’s picture book "Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale," follows Pancho Rabbit as he searches for his father through deserts, a river, an underground tunnel and a border wall patrolled by an "Orange Snapping Turtle." The staging features singers costumed as rabbits, coyotes, snakes and butterflies; Victor Ryan Robertson sang the coyote and the American soprano Maya Goell played Pancho in Tijuana, while the contralto Sharmay Musacchio portrayed the turtle.

The opera uses allegory to address migration and border enforcement, depicting scenes that include a dream in which butterflies rescue a child locked in a cage and descriptions of border patrol officers with green night goggles, guns and plastic handcuffs. Davis, who has written operas about charged political subjects and teaches near the border at the University of California, San Diego, said he wanted to capture children’s imaginations while keeping a subtext about contemporary hostility toward migrants.

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