All in a Day: Beaver

Utah Opera resident artists (Jasmine Rodriguez, Winona Martin, Jehu Otero, Tshilidzi Ndou, and Laura Bleakley) will perform All in a Day, a concert filled with musical numbers from opera and musical theatre as well as two short operas, one of them commissioned especially for this traveling concert. The concert scenes progress from morning through evening of a very good day: one that includes both a dog adoption and a birthday party!

The short opera about dog adoption Pepito was composed by Nicolas Lell Benavides to a libretto by Marella Martin Koch.  A couple visits an animal shelter to adopt a dog, and the wife makes a particular connection with a lonely dog who misses his Spanish-speaking former owners. The second short opera, Happy Birthday, was commissioned by Utah Opera from Utah composer Andrew Maxfield and librettist Ruthie Prillaman. The opera addresses the controversy and resolution of the question about who really owns the “Happy Birthday” song that we all know and sing all the time.