Over synthesized and sustained chords, a baritone voice chants out the libretto, "You wouldn't know that's a pig heart. I could tell you it was human-you would believe that" in Heather Dewey-Hagborg's new film Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera (2022), as the camera lingers on ultrasound imaging of a pig. A researcher gently caresses the sedated creature while it breathes evenly amid testing. Dewey-Hagborg's own voiceover asks, "Are you still other if you come closer and closer to me?" in this part documentary, part autotheoretical journey, and part memorial interspecies opera. The film traces the evolution of the biomedical phenomenon of xenotransplantation-the genetic implantation of human cells in an animal host for the purposes of growing and eventually harvesting organs-alongside the dual narrative of Hagborg's 3D printing and firing of porcine figures in clay in an opera far from melodramatic.
