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This article addresses the concept of performance opera by artist duo VestAndPage, aiming to investigate how the corporeal and sonic can generate space–time alternatives through unconventional modes of performance-making. They describe performance operas as collaborative, site-specific works that are unrepeatable. To produce them, VestAndPage organized experiential co-creation artist-in-residences to encourage community-building among the performers they invite to collaborate on an opera. During production, body-based performance actions and the sounds of various elements (from everyday noises to sophisticated electronic experimentation) allow aesthetic pitfalls and ruptures to emerge, shaping a performance opera’s immediate experience and contributing to reshaping what might otherwise be considered ‘normal’ reality.