Paola Prestini Built an Opera Around AI and a Mind Trapped for 22 Years

Composer Paola Prestini's new opera Sensorium Ex centers on a character who has been locked inside his own consciousness for twenty-two years and can only communicate through custom AI tools developed with NYU's Ability Lab. This is not a metaphor. The technology is real, the libretto is by poet Brenda Shaughnessy, and the questions the piece asks about voice, agency, and what counts as expression are ones the opera world is not entirely prepared for.