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Howard Shore, The Fly:  Soloists, chorus and orchestra of Los Angeles Opera, Placido Domingo, conductor; Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. 7.9.2008 (HS)

Cast:

SETH BRUNDLE, Daniel Okulitch
VERONICA QUAIFE, Ruxandra Donose
STATHIS BORANS, Gary Lehman
OFFICER/MEDICAL ANALYST/CHEEVERS, Beth Clayton
MARKY, Jay Hunter Morris
TAWNY PERKINS, Ashlyn Rust

Production:

LIBRETTIST, David Henry Hwang
DIRECTOR, David Cronenberg
SET DESIGNER, Dante Ferretti
COSTUME DESIGNER, Denise Cronenberg
LIGHTING DESIGNER, AJ Weissbard
ASSOCIATE CONDUCTOR/CHORUS MASTER, Grant Gershon
MAKEUP AND CREATURE DESIGN, Stephan L. Dupuis
MAKEUP, CREATURE AND PUPPET FABRICATION, Mark Rappaport's Creature Effects, Inc.

Those who know David Cronenberg's 1986 film "The Fly" probably remember mostly its gore. The title character, a mad scientist played by Jeff Goldblum, gradually transforms into a gigantic insect, losing fingernails and various appendages in several memorable "yuck" moments. But there's a story of human emotions in the film as well, as the scientist and a pretty science reporter, played in the film by Geena Davis, struggle to come to grips with their own love story and its consequences.

Sounds like great stuff for an opera, doesn't it? Los Angeles Opera thought so, too, and co-commissioned one. It made its U.S. debut Sunday with Placido Domingo conducting and Cronenberg directing (the first performances were in July at Theatre de Châtelet in Paris). The results seem surprisingly tepid.

As in many horror films, the music provides much of the visceral emotional impact. Howard Shore wrote it, and has since gone on to write the scores for other films, including 12 of Cronenberg's ("M. Butterfly" and "Eastern Promises" among them). He got several Oscars for "Lord of the Rings." With those credentials, a new opera on "The Fly" by Shore, using some of the material from the film and a libretto by David Henry Hwang, should have been a wow.

Unfortunately, what makes Shore such a superb film composer doesn't translate to opera, or at least not this one. His music can create a mood, underline a moment or suggest a fleeting emotion without getting in the way of a film's prime reason for being: the visual narrative. In opera, the music must carry the narrative, or it's just a play with good background music. And that's pretty much what we have in "The Fly." Shore's music just isn't strong enough to carry the narrative. Hwang's libretto, alternately too prosaic or grandiose, doesn't do it either.

The story is set in the 1950s. The curtain rises on a laboratory littered with piles of trash. A police detective interviews Veronica, who begins to tell the tale. The laboratory remains through scene changes accomplished by wheeling in desks, chairs, hospital beds, and at one point a billiard table and some table settings to represent a bar. Veronica meets Seth Brundle, an introverted scientist, at a party for her magazine's awards. He shows her what he's working on—teleportation—and successfully teleports one of her stockings from one "pod" to another in the laboratory, but a later attempt to make it work with a monkey fails.

As they fall in love, culminating in an onstage sex scene, Brundle figures out how to make the teleportation process work with flesh. He transports the monkey, but then with Veronica away to break off an old affair with her boss, Stathis, Seth impulsively transports himself. An unseen but loudly heard fly gets into the pod with him and scrambles their DNA. End of Act I. Seth comes out of the process virile and confident, spouting phrases such as "All hail the new flesh," and in a marathon night of sex gets Veronica pregnant. But soon the fly DNA starts to make itself more prominent in Seth. In the end, having morphed into a giant fly, he attempts to force Veronica to blend her DNA with his by teleporting at the same time. Stathis rescues her in time, but Seth suffers the fate of the first baboon. Veronica takes Stathis' gun and kills Seth.

Although Seth is the title role, Veronica is the pivotal part. Romanian mezzo-soprano Roxandra Donose, looking slim and sexy her tight-fitting 1950s outfits, has the stage presence and musical heft to flesh out the character. She has two big scenes, and delivers them with power. But they got a tepid response from the audience because they come after too many scenes of nothing but parlando and recitative. The first 40 minutes of the opera is nothing but scene setting. The music just never opens up vocally.

Daniel Okulitch wielded a sweet lyric baritone as Seth, but lacked power in the lower register, which weakened the character. In the first act he played the role with such a lack of personality that it took away from the narrative. He got stronger in the second act.

Gary Lehman, who recently sang Tristan at the Met, sang powerfully as Sathis, the editor and third member of the love triangle. But Shore's music never gave him a signature moment or something recognizably different to define his character. Mezzo Beth Clayton made her usual fine impression but in multiple thankless roles. In a brief episode, Seth breaks the arm of Marky, a strongman (Jay Hunter Morris, another Wagnerian tenor), and captures a young hotty (soprano Ashlyn Rust) to satisfy his lust when Veronica tires.

In general, the staging managed to stop short of becoming too hokey. High marks too for the puppeteers who designed and manipulated the monkey, a winsome little capuchin) and in the final scene the distorted body of Seth as the fly. There was also some nice stagecraft to show the suddenly virile Seth tumbling and flipping around, and eventually climbing the walls and ceiling.

The chorus did its part, too, portraying partygoers and bar denizens, but mostly voicing the computer in Seth's lab. But all those grandiose "new flesh" lines needed more musical underpinning than Shore provided. As purely instrumental music, the scene setting and interludes are highly listenable and effective. Domingo and the orchestra gave them plenty of thrust, but things work less well when combined with voices. Not a good thing for an opera.

In a story that could play well in a comic book, Cronenberg's movie making and Shore's music gave the film some unexpected depth. As an opera, not so much.

Harvey Steiman

Pictures © Marie-Noelle Robert

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