As Jacques Attali points out, the earliest forms of sound recording, such as Edison’s cylinder, were intended to serve as secondary adjuncts to live performance by preserving it. The ways early sound recording technology was used respected and reinforced the primacy of existing modes of performance. Live and recorded performances thus coexisted clearly as discrete, complementary experiences, necessitating no particular effort to distinguish them (Attali 1977). The same truism transposes today for physical opera vis-à-vis screened opera. There is no social need to question the ontological nature of 'live'.