ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the posthumous duet as a performance medium in relation to the visual aural. It summarises the positive and negative discourses of performing beyond the grave, with a focus on performances on television the common incarnation of the posthumous duet. The chapter begins by theorising the posthumous duet as sonic recontextualisation, explaining the overlapping modes of performance that reach beyond the binary categories of live and recorded. The online or televised posthumous duet exemplifies 'digitextuality', in that 'digital fabrications function as real-time experience of a sort to overcome not only time and space, but life and death'. Stanyek and Piekut suggest that the first posthumous collaboration occurred when dead tenor Enrico Caruso's voice from a 1907 recording was dubbed with live musicians for a 1932 release. Lisa Bode's studies on the reanimation of dead actors for new filmic contexts provides an entry point to understanding the issue of manufacturing performance relationships in the context of the posthumous duet.
