Last Friday was the first opera of the 2008/09 season for us, David Cronenberg's The Fly. Whenever a film director deigns to direct an opera, it's always a bit exciting. Especially here in Whoresville, we love to coo and clap for our movie directors. Mr. Cronenberg's 1986 film The Fly (originally done in 1958 w/Vincent Price) quickly became a cult classic and is a great piece of cinema. However (cough), just because something is a great movie, doesn't necessarily mean one should turn it into an opera. Just give pause to the horror that would be Jurassic Park or Independence Day in opera form. Oh crap, I've probably just given someone that idea now!
As with most operas produced at LA Opera, the sets, costumes, and all the trimmings are over-the-top and impressive. But the music? What exactly does one go to the opera for again? Oh yeah right, the music. If, God forbid, The Fly was being produced by your kid's high school drama club and had cardboard teleporters and a home-made fly suit, it wouldn't have a leg to stand on. As Mark Swed so aptly describes in his less-than-stellar LA Times review, "... I am at a loss to understand why "The Fly" has turned out so dreary, despite the inclusion of sex, nudity, puppetry and athleticism." Indeed!
This is my main bone of contention with almost all modern opera. What is so horrible about beauty? harmony? cohesion? If a melody makes my heart beat faster, or the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, is that a bad thing? and since when? Modern opera seems hell-bent on proving to you HOW modern it is, just by sheer force of ugliness alone. Go ahead, it says, just try and get one of these arias stuck in your head. It's borderline impossible. Are all the rich, jaded, artistic types just completely oblivious to beauty anymore? Or are they surrounded by yes-men who just tell them how everything sounds like rainbows and butterflies and they believe it? At some point, why didn't anyone have the sac to step in and say "um, maybe this needs more work?" instead of green-lighting it? Sadly this is the case with most modern opera. Why do they keep throwing money at sad, unfulfilling, uninspiring music?
Let's just cut right to the meat of the matter: full frontal male nudity. Is it a necessity in opera? I know I've savored many a wonderful evening at the opera house and nary a willy have I seen there under the lights. Here it seemed to be employed as: titillation for titillation's sake, which is always sad. The one truly shocking special effect came when an acrobatic body-double snuck in and did some cool backflips and hand-stands before slinking off and Seth Brundle came back in. That was actually successful. But the robotic puppet baboons, the ceiling crawling, the fake broken arm spurting blood, the perfunctory fucking, all were FAILs.
That being said, I didn't entirely hate The Fly. I particularly liked the way they employed the chorus as an off-stage robotic univoice. Now that was catchy, as you'll see if you watch the video below.
Poor Mr. Cronenberg seemed bound and determined to recast every blessed scene from his movie and there were so many little unnecessary comings and goings. People wheel a cart in, just to wheel it out 4 minutes later. Why?! I could also have done without Veronica going on-and-on-and-on at the end about how she was going to keep the baby. We get it, you're not getting rid of the baby, OKAY. I was expecting a Madonna "Papa Don't Preach" mashup at any moment.
So creators, purveyors, and peddlers of opera, please, please, please stop with the blatant, bracing "rawness" and give me something moving, eloquent, and memorable.
All in all, on a scale of 1 to 10, with Grendel being 1 and Tosca being 10, I'd give The Fly a 3.
The Fly, New Flesh FAIL from mayjah on Vimeo.
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