David Cronenberg’s Operatic Treatment of ‘The Fly’

Be afraid, be very afraid ... of the opera? Yes, when that most highbrow of musical experiences swan dives into the macabre with The Fly, a classical reimagining of cult film auteur David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi terror masterpiece. The Fly buzzes into the Los Angeles Opera this month after a controversial Paris debut, directed by Cronenberg himself. That this Canadian iconoclast outraged with his first opera attempt is no surprise: he’s famed, to his chagrin, as the premier eminence of “body horror.” Everyone from cyberpunks to Chuck Palahniuk owes their nipple rings to Cronenberg’s transgression, so to see him collaborating with mainstream opera avatar Plácido Domingo (The Fly’s conductor) is, well, shocking.

Cronenberg joins a recent tradition of film directors, spanning Woody Allen to William Friedkin, who are going operatic. “Coming from other media, we aren’t history bound,” he says. “They want us to shake it up.”

According to Cronenberg, the idea spawned via his longtime soundtrack composer, Howard Shore, who wrote the music; David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) then wrote the libretto, while Domingo handled baton duties. “I wouldn’t have done this with anybody else,” Cronenberg says. “On a film, I would never let anyone else speak to the actors. But in a pleasant surprise, I discovered that Howard’s music ‘pre-directed’ in a way, in how it interpreted the emotions. And Plácido is the most talented, least diva-like guy: a 77-piece orchestra is a machine that I can’t operate.”

The biggest change, however, was switching the setting from the 1980s to the Cold War 1950s; that Cronenberg’s Fly was itself a remake of a 1958 horror film adds another kicky semiotic layer. “There’s more meaning in that choice, considering where we are in the world,” he says. “A weird déjà vu is happening; we’ve gone back to those times. Rather than giving it kitschy distance, it’s now more resonant.” Cronenberg relishes that The Fly’s source material is a short story from atomic-age Playboy (“it was paradise—naked women and really good writing”). He sees a thin, sticky line connecting the topics of his work and that of traditional opera: lust, retribution, transformation. “I didn’t feel a deep urge to revisit those themes,” he says. “But once I engaged them, the passion started coming. The more your blood mixes with it, it becomes part of you.”