Přehled o publikaci

This contribution takes the form of a lecture performance, presenting a critical and artistic exploration of the role of the opera prompter as a site of "multisensory negotiation" and "resonance without mastery". The performance serves as a practical output of the doctoral research project The Monster Sings. The artist utilizes a complex performative setup—combining the live delivery of an operatic score (Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana), video projection, and the reading of a "script of complaints". By reacting to audio cues in headphones while simultaneously narrating additional textual layers, the performer embodies the high-stakes, "invisible" labor of the prompter—a voice that must be "always heard and never heard". The performance explores the tension between the functional attributes of the voice (timing, volume) and its aesthetic and personal qualities (timbre, identity). Central to the argument is the parallel between the prompter’s liminality and the rehearsal of a trans voice*, both suspended in a state of "becoming" and "unfinished relation". Following the cessation of the music, the performance shifts into a direct, non-verbal engagement with the audience, utilizing "gestures of care" and "prompter’s cues" (winks, smiles) to establish a field of attunement based on "shared risk" rather than performative mastery. The work thus challenges traditional notions of resonance, proposing instead a practice of "resonance as interference" and a refusal to fully perform for the "visible world".