Blog September 19 2008 The Fly Opera
TITLE: The Buzz Around Town (file under “Pop Culture”)
“I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.” This is the old saying that popped into my head at the conclusion of the L.A. Opera’s production of The Fly [ when a senior season-pass holder dressed to the nines huffed, “Well, we survived that!” Survived what, exactly? Did she think she was settling in for a truncated version of Madame Butterfly instead of a stage interpretation of director David Cronenberg’s gooey, grisly, sexually-charged 1986 cult hit? Anyone who has seen the film starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis is familiar with its dramatic, operatic structure (Methinks some of the Angeleno opera-going literati need to update their Blockbuster accounts and brush up on pop culture).
Composer Howard Shore and Cronenberg have transformed one of their classic collaborations into this unusual opera that is making its U.S. debut in Los Angeles after a summer Paris premiere. The set design is impressive with much of it centering on Seth Brundle’s gloomy warehouse lab where he is conducting experiments in an attempt to teleport matter from one telepod to another. A fly accidentally gets into the telepod with Brundle and fuses with him, gradually transforming the scientist into a six-foot-plus bug. As Brundle, Daniel Okulitch (pictured) has to, at different times during the performance, strip down completely naked, crawl across the ceiling upside down, have simulated sex with two women onstage and sing about “insect politics” and more while dressed in a latex fly suit. If some of this sounds a little silly, well, it is, and the dialogue is often tongue in cheek (“I can’t live on sex and candy bars!”). Still, the opera, like the movie it’s based upon, deals with weightier matters like abortion and a woman’s understandable fear of birthing a monster—in this case, a giant maggot.
Conductor Plácido Domingo and the orchestra bring Howard Shore’s familiar Fly theme music to life and the rest of the cast, including Ruxandra Donose as Brundle’s doomed damsel Veronica, embrace their roles with gusto. Opera virgins will be lured to The Fly: The Opera for some of the remaining September shows at L.A.’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion due to a fascination with Cronenberg’s fascinating film. Inflexible connoisseurs who insist upon a more traditional opera experience should “be afraid…be very afraid.”