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Will David Cronenberg’s opera fly?

July 2nd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Daniel Okulitch performs in a scene from David Cronenberg’s first opera, THE FLY

David Cronenberg, the father of modern horror, has an opera debuting in Paris tonight that’s creating quite a buzz.

Mr. Cronenberg will direct a new version of The Fly with Placido Domingo conducting a score by Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore.

Shore, a childhood friend of Cronenberg’s, first teamed with the director on The Brood (1979). This marks the duo’s fifteen collaboration. According to The Associated Press, the composer “who also wrote the film’s original music, said he started picturing The Fly as an opera as soon as the movie was released.”

Shore said he sampled only two themes from his 1986 work.

Another Cronenberg crony, Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) wrote the melodramatic libretto. The Fly marks not only Cronenberg’s operatic debut, but also the LA Opera debut of Marty’s production designer of choice, Dante Ferretti.

The opera will have its world premiere Wednesday at Paris’ Theatre du Chatelet and its U.S. premiere Sept. 7 at the Los Angeles Opera.

The plot is said to follow the film’s basic storyline, only the setting has been shifted from the 80s to the 50s, the time of the original version’s release. The AP’s Angela Doland writes, “ The retro set design is evocative of 1950s horror flicks. And there’s something thrilling about the old-school special effects—terrifically gruesome costumes, a singing teleport machine and a giant fly scaling an opera set.”

When asked what attracted him to a story of a man forced to vomit on his food before consuming it, world class tenor Placido Domingo said, “Why not? I couldn’t resist.”

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