47 Things to See, Hear, and Do This Fall

He pursues weird scientific experiments. He accidentally turns himself into a fly. He dies. And, in the latest incarnation of The Fly, he sings. Filmmaker David Cronenberg's 1986 sci-fi classic is now an opera, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang and a score by Oscar-winner Howard Shore, composer of the music for Lord of the Rings. Cronenberg, who is staging the U.S. premiere at the Los Angeles Opera, says it is "about something that happens to everybody, which is aging and ultimately death. So it has this universal potency underneath the sci-fi trappings." Not singing this time out is tenor Placido Domingo, who will be on the conductor's podium.

— Christopher Porterfield