Classic Cronenberg horror film ‘The Fly’ gets a makeover by Placido Domingo’s Los Angeles Opera

By W. H. Bourne

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 9/05/08 – “Well I hear the transporter making a big noise like a giant coffee percolator which is apt because a lot of things have been percolating since we first joined forces to create this opera,” says writer-director David Cronenberg of the film version of ‘The Fly’ in 1986. Cronenberg sits in front of an elaborate laboratory set at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles as final rehearsals are underway for the U. S. Premiere of L.A. Opera’s ‘The Fly’ on September 7, 2008.

“One of things which I discussed with Howard Shore was my desire to have  a fully staged theatrical experience. I really didn’t want to interject song into the film,” says Cronenberg. “I didn’t want to do a remake or replicate the movie on stage.” Composer Howard Shore and Cronenberg have been collaborating together since 1979 with Shore scoring all but one of Cronenberg’s films.

“Also I didn’t want to rewrite the screenplay again,” says Cronenberg. “That’s why David Henry Hwang was also  a very crucial part of this creative team because he wrote the libretto. He brought to that libretto things I would have never done. He brought  structure and a tone that alluded to the movie but was quite different from the movie.”

“The French opera critics really tied themselves in knots trying to compare the opera to the movie and I was like why are you even bothering,” says Cronenberg. “When I read the libretto, I really forgot about the movie. This opera is something else. It is it’s own creature. It’s not the movie.”

“The last time I was here in this theater, I was sitting up there with my wife for the 1986 Academy Awards at which ‘The Fly’ had been nominated for special effects,” says Cronenberg. “And it won for that. My special effects people were up on stage holding Oscars. I was way up in the balcony looking, and I had to look at the monitors in order to see because they were so small. But one of them, Stephan L. Dupuis, has done special effects for this production as well.”

“So the bloodlines are good and the DNA is good as well,” says Cronenberg. “And if you know the story, you know why the DNA is very important.” Other members from the film team joining the opera production of ‘The Fly’ include costume designer Denise Cronenberg.

“It’s been a fantastic, and very interesting and exciting adventure for me because I’ve never done any stage before other than playing Banquo in ‘Macbeth’ as a kid in high school,” says Cronenberg. I thought I looked real good in tights actually [laughs], but other than that, I had no stage experience and certainly never had directed stage.”

“Howard Shore is an opera buff and a composer, and opera has been a part of his whole life forever,” says Cronenberg. “But, that’s different from me. I have not been an obsessive opera buff, but music was always in my house. My mother was a pianist and often there were opera singers at the house. I still know many arias and I’ve heard a lot of opera out of context. I played classical guitar for eleven years. Music is there in my head.”

“I would have never taken the initiative to do such a thing,” says Cronenberg about directing the new opera, ‘The Fly’.  “But when Howard wanted to do it, being the friend and collaborator that he is, I took it seriously and thought, well okay, that would be interesting because you really need to terrify yourself if you’re an artist.”

“You can’t get too complacent; you get stale and you’re boring yourself,” says Cronenberg. “To do an opera would be a scary new thing for me. And I started to think seriously about it, but it was Howard who put that bug in my ear.  It’s all  his impetus. It’s all his fault. Blame him!”

“There is a movement in the opera world to make sure that the art form survives and evolves because if it doesn’t evolve it will die,” explains Cronenberg. “You can’t just have a static repertory of operas and that’s it.”

“The need to have a new audience to grow with new operas.,” says Cronenberg. “It makes a lot of sense really. Any art form needs to do it. Realizing how many new operas are appearing that are based on movies, for example, with directors who haven’t done opera before, I can see that’s a desire in opera companies to revitalize the art form and keep it evolving.”

“That’s what happening to people in opera in general,” says Cronenberg. “Once the door opens to that and you stopped thinking about the classics because the classics, after all, were based on contemporary things; they were dukes and princesses, princes and duchesses, but those were people that existed, were in power, and interested in seeing operas about themselves. And the operas then were based on contemporary plays and novels and poems.”

“And for us a contemporary opera would be based on a movie for one thing, also novels and plays and poems,” says Cronenberg. “But for us, why not based on a movie being the force that movies are? Now I could see all my films as potential operas. ‘Crash’ could be a fantastic opera and ‘Dead Ringers’ also could be a terrific opera . ‘Naked Lunch’ could be a good opera. I could see those mugwamps dancing and singing.”

U. S. Premiere of L.A. Opera’s ‘The Fly’
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles
September 7, 2008

Photos by Odin Lindblom