Maria Teré Rique, the general director of Opera de Tijuana, will act as co-presenter and as the liaison for the Tijuana performances. J.Ed Araiza, who oversaw Long Beach Opera’s world premiere of Davis’ “The Central Park Five,” will direct “Pancho Rabbit.”

Davis and the DuMelles first agreed in 2018 to collaborate on “Pancho Rabbit.” Obtaining the rights to adapt the book and to raise funding to underwrite its transformation into a chamber opera proved a time-consuming process. The pandemic-fueled shutdown of live events in 2020 and much of 2021, which posed an existential crisis for arts groups large and small, also extended the timeline.

Davis, who will be in residence at the American Academy of Rome for the month of September, has had a remarkable run since his 2020 Pulitzer win. In 2021, he was inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Letters. In 2023, his acclaimed “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which premiered in 1986, became only the second opera by a Black composer to be staged by New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Davis has long worked to expand the parameters of opera, both with his chosen subject matter and by expertly drawing not only from classical music but from jazz, funk, hip-hop and other contemporary styles. For “Pancho Rabbit,” he plans to incorporate such instruments as marimba and accordion, and to draw from both nortēno music and rock.

”‘Pancho Rabbit’ is in the tradition of ‘Peter and The Wolf’ and George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’,” Davis said. “It has an adult subtext but I want to keep the appeal and specialness of it as a children’s story.”

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(Union-Tribune freelance music writer Beth Wood contributed to this report.)

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