Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is a bilingual cross-border opera about the life and death of Pancho Villa. Commissioned by Ballroom, the project is the third installment of The Marfa Triptych, a genre-hopping trilogy of musical performances by visionary composer Graham Reynolds. The opera is an insightful examination of the Mexican and Mexican-American impact on the culture and politics of West Texas, contributing to the current and timely conversation about borders and the limitations of the concept of delineated states.

Exploring facts from Villa’s biography while also examining the mythology surrounding him, the opera asks what Pancho Villa means to Mexican and American culture and where these meanings intersect and conflict. The opera brings together artistic collaborators from both sides of the river to engage in a borderless conversation about the shared history between Mexico and the United States, Pancho Villa From a Safe Distance is the epic closing chapter in The Marfa Triptych.  Reynolds experiments with an exciting hybrid of composition and production techniques while leading an eight piece ensemble to bring Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol’s fascinating libretto to an intensely visceral and intimate life.

The team includes composer Graham Reynolds; Mexico City-based theater collective Lagartijas Tiradas Al Sol as librettists; Shawn Sides of the Rude Mechs as director; Austin Lyric Opera tenor Paul Sanchez as Pancho Villa; and Grammy Award-winning producer Adrian Quesada on guitar.

To stay up to date on future performances please visit panchovillaopera.com.