Sensorium Ex is an opera with a platform for discovery and inclusivity, a codex for how to fluidly involve disability in opera. It’s also a work of AI as a community impact project that’s been developing for over seven years and will be premiering at Common Senses Festival in Omaha in May 2025. Composer and Co-Founder of National Sawdust, Paola Prestini, began working on this project to expand possibilities for inclusivity and accessibility in opera, which has not been made a priority until now. 

“Sensorium Ex was made out of necessity and this continuous need that we have for inventing new paths. The imagination of the work is rooted in an ideology that all these voices are extraordinary and need to be heard. The question is how do we create more space for it? This question is also what gets me going, whether it be creating a space like National Sawdust or a new pathway forward while working on this opera. I want what we do today to contribute to a better vision of inclusivity for the future and one of the best ways to learn about how to do this is through necessity,” Prestini said.

Co-director and choreographer of Sensorium Ex, Jerron Herman, is a collaborating activist who also focuses on the real needs that must be met to make lasting changes in this art form. Prestini’s work with Herman and their advisory board invites new perspectives that challenge tradition and bias within the opera world that have remained as fixed standards, preventing any real changes that address human needs. “To think that we’ve been asking for authentic representation for a while, and for others to impact and architect these types of spaces without prompt is incredible,” said Herman. “There is this resonance in Sensorium Ex that circulates, and I knew I wanted to be part of it. I am primarily a soloist dancer in the contemporary world where we don’t show face and we, a lot of times, are very stern. Opera invites me to be emotive and expressive.”

The codex for Sensorium Ex chronicles the learning and creative process behind the work. This documentation began during the audition process and extends into the basics of timing and cost procedures that support creating a braille score and understanding the rehearsal process needs of those with disabilities. “Our hopes are that by chronicling this and then offering it as an open source document in the opera industry, more people will be encouraged to produce work like Sensorium Ex and to aggregate this information so that it gets easier,” Prestini said.

Librettist Brenda Shaughnessy’s synopsis for Sensorium Ex details her brilliant tale about a mother’s love, science, technology, and the worlds that we live in. It examines what it means to have a voice and to listen, inviting new voices and perspectives into opera that have not been present until now. The idea of evolving opera is only an idea until it becomes an action. Sensorium Ex is an active response to what many new voices have been silently envisioning for a long time.

Mezzo-soprano Hailey McAvoy sings the role of Mem, the lead researcher and mother of Kitsune, a child with a disability. McAvoy is a performer with Cerebral Palsy who works to amplify the discussion around disability in the arts, especially within the vocal community. McAvoy’s voice in Sensorium Ex responds to the deep need for more voices to be celebrated in opera, including vo

“This makes me so emotional because, at the end of the day, this is what we always need in human interaction. I speak from my own intimate knowledge with disability and knowing what it feels like to think you are something that needs to be fixed or something that can get closer to what the anatomy textbooks tell you is right, then the better you’ll be. This type of thinking can become like a cage. For me, it’s a huge honor to play a role of someone who realizes they were putting their own child in a cage in their attempt to help them and everything they did to love them. This story is nuanced!” McAvoy said.

Sensorium Ex is a voice of opera futurism, and composer Prestini’s work illuminates the fecundity between notes, widening the spectrum of the human voice and amalgamating them within the context of AI’s possibilities. Most of her work celebrates this idea of the human voice being at the core of what makes music beautiful, ethereal, universal. Sensorium Ex intelligently weaves the essence of voice with science by co-creating with AI to generate a shared response to what it is that makes opera enriching and empathic at the same time—an intuitive art form.

“I have found opera to be this type of form that draws me in and gives me ways to tell the stories I want to tell. I believe the human voice tells this best and being able to work with different voices and artists to express the human story evolves my own creative practice. This is also why I continue to push my own boundaries and create new works; once you’re out of school, you have to create your own school. I want to continuously create spaces where I can learn more and I think collaboration is the best way to do this for me,” Prestini said.

About Jennifer Pyron

Jennifer Pyron is a vocalist, opera critic, and editor whose perspective engages with the evolution of opera and live performance art through accessibility, awareness, collaboration and cultural sovereignty.