“Jūratė”: Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’ operatic dream revived through AI

Who was Čiurlionis (1875–1911)? A pivotal figure of the Lithuanian national revival, he brought together two realms – music and painting – while bridging two cultures: Polish and Lithuanian. He studied at the Warsaw Institute of Music, developing his compositional talent under Antoni Sygietyński and Zygmunt Noskowski, and later at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, where he trained as a painter. In Warsaw, he became part of an artistic and intellectual circle that opened new creative perspectives and encouraged his explorations at the intersection of sound and image. Though rooted in Romanticism, Čiurlionis looked far into the future, pioneering a modern synthesis of the arts. His paintings, often inspired by musical forms such as the fugue, sonata, or prelude, established a new visual language, while his musical compositions – imbued with lyricism and melancholy – drew deeply on Lithuanian folklore. In Poland he found friends and patrons, and although his artistic sensitivity was shaped there, he consciously and increasingly tied himself to Lithuanian culture, learning the language and engaging in national life. Čiurlionis spent the last months of his life in Marki near Warsaw, at Władysław Olechnowicz’s sanatorium “Czerwony Dwór” (The Red Manor) for patients with nervous and mental conditions, where he died on April 10, 1911. The Tadeusz Lużyński Cultural Centre in Marki has long been dedicated to keeping the artist’s memory alive.

“Jūratė” was Čiurlionis’s dream. He wrote about it, translating his operatic vision into sketches and notes. Based on these fragments, ideas, and scenographic drawings preserved in his letters – especially those to his beloved wife, Sofija – the creative team constructed an imagined opera. The production was made possible through the use of artificial intelligence tools designed to generate musical scores. “Jūratė” was presented at the Pohulanka Theatre, now known as the Vilnius Old Theatre, as part of NOA (New Opera Action) – the 9^th Contemporary Opera Festival, a forward-looking, interdisciplinary event open to diverse themes, forms, and experimentations, and dedicated primarily to presenting world premieres of innovative productions.

What is “Jūratė” about? It tells a simple story based on a well-known Lithuanian legend: the sea goddess Jūratė falls in love with the daring fisherman Kastytis, who defies the gods by fishing in forbidden waters. The lovers dwell together in an underwater palace, until Jūratė’s father, the thunder god Perkūnas, enraged by the misalliance, causes Kastytis to drown and condemns his daughter to endless grief. Yet love is eternal and indestructible – the opera concludes with a final duet of the reunited lovers.

The two-act opera was written by Mantautas Krukauskas, Arvydas Malcys and Mykolas Natalevičius, using the “Composer’s Assistant 2” tool developed by American researcher Martin Malandro. Parts of the score were generated by feeding the AI model prompts based on fragments of Čiurlionis’s works. At first it was quite difficult to achieve satisfying results, wrote Mykolas Natalevičius in the program notes. After testing various approaches, I focused on combining excerpts of his late piano music with harmonizations of folk songs. This change allowed for a more musical outcome. The result was a coherent, fresh and intriguing score – pleasant to the ear and hovering stylistically between the 19^th and 21^st centuries. The work was orchestrated for a small, 30-piece ensemble – the kind Čiurlionis himself might have used. The orchestration bears the hallmarks of late Romanticism and Expressionism, aiming for the dense, expressive sound typical of the period, commented Alvydas Malcys. Mantautas Krukauskas added, Our goal as creators was not to imitate Čiurlionis, but to imagine what his opera might have been – drawing on the details of his musical and painterly work, his aesthetics, and his historical context.

Before the performance, the small theatre – holding just over 400 seats – was filled with dense smoke, creating a dreamlike, otherworldly atmosphere (and provoking frequent coughing among the audience). The packed hall waited in suspense, uncertain of what to expect. According to Rokas Zubovas, historical consultant and great-grandson of Čiurlionis, The opera is not a reconstruction but an imagined space, reflecting the fact that we live in a completely different era – that each person on the creative team contributes a piece of their own living heart: the river of culture has flowed on for almost one hundred and twenty years since those times.

When the curtain rose, two figures were visible at the center of the stage, reflected in a large mirror suspended at a 45-degree angle. They might have represented Čiurlionis and his wife Sofija (played by actors), or perhaps simply a timeless personification of lovers from all ages. The simplicity of the libretto made the first act unfold without much dramatic tension; only the appearance of Perkūnas – dressed “all in white” at the start of the second act thickened the atmosphere. The choreography, however, was masterful. Throughout the performance, a horizontal dance between Sofija and Konstantinas unfolded on stage, perceived vertically by the audience through the mirror’s reflection. Their figures seemed to float across a boundless sea – lost in the depths of history or perhaps their own relationship. In contrast, the singers remained still and composed while performing their vocal parts. Particularly striking were the bright soprano of Jūratė (Lauryna Bendžiunaitė) and the deep bass of Perkūnas (Raimundas Juzuitis). Romanas Kurdiašovas (baritone) as Kastytis also gave a fine performance, especially in the second act.

Unlike the refined costumes made of natural materials in muted, elegant tones, Renata Valčik’s minimalist set design proved a little disappointing. Firstly, it lacked any direct reference to Čiurlionis’s surviving color sketches for “Jūratė.” These could have been incorporated through brief projections or displayed on the curtain during the intermission. The set designer also missed an opportunity to reference Čiurlionis’s pictorial language and his concept of the synthesis of the arts. The use of ordinary painter’s plastic sheeting to represent fish and sea serpents felt out of place – the utilitarian material clashed with the subtle poetics of the narrative. The only conceivable justification might be an ecological one – a desire to draw attention to the problem of plastic pollution in today’s seas and oceans.

After nearly two hours, as the curtain fell, the audience immediately rose to its feet, greeting the artists with a warm standing ovation. There was a palpable sense of pride, joy and nostalgia – as if, through the haze filling the theatre, the ghostly knight from Lithuania’s Pahonia emblem had momentarily ridden by. It was absolutely worth seeing this production – not only for Čiurlionis, but above all for the Lithuanian artists creatively reinterpreting their cultural heritage.

Luiza Wojciechowska-Konopka – painter, astronomer and author of numerous cultural education projects devoted to M.K. Čiurlionis. She works at the Tadeusz Lużyński Cultural Centre in Marki, an institution that has long introduced Polish audiences to the legacy of the artist.

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