“Jūratė”
An imaginary opera by M. K. Čiurlionis
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) had a profound understanding of the weight and significance of the opera genre for the entire cultural field. In January 1906, he wrote to his brother Povilas (even before the first national opera, Birutė by Mikas Petrauskas): “Are you familiar with the Lithuanian movement? I am determined to devote all my past and future works to Lithuania. We are learning the Lithuanian language, and I am preparing to write a Lithuanian opera”. Thus, the composer singled out opera as a particularly significant form of expression of national musical cultural identity.
The idea to write a Lithuanian opera became a specific goal for M. K. Čiurlionis after meeting a young writer, Sofija Kymantaitė, who later became his wife. By the summer of 1908, the theme of the opera was already known as well. The opera was to be based on the legend The Queen of the Baltic Sea, created around 1830 by Liudvikas Adomas Jucevičius, a Lithuanian writer, ethnographer, folklorist, historian, and translator. The surviving sketches of M. K. Čiurlionis’ set designs and correspondence about the libretto Sofija was working on clearly demonstrate that they relied on this version of the legend about the love of Jūratė and Kastytis.
We know from correspondence that Sofija had finished the libretto and sent it to St. Petersburg, where Konstantinas was staying at the time. We also know that the composer spent a considerable amount of time at the piano with the libretto, searching for the sound of Jūratė. After reading the libretto, Konstantinas wrote to Sofija about the musical language and staging ideas for the future opera: “My fascination with Jūratė is growing every day, and today I heard a little bit of the music in it. <…> Zose, Zose, advise me. Should I avoid folk melodies in it, or not? Should I take technical challenges into account, or not? When you think that our people are so poor and have nothing, I feel sorry that this work will pass them by, and yet you and I want to give them something. You understand me, Zosele, that I don’t want to offend myself, I just want to set myself a more difficult task. I want it to be possible to perform it even in Warsaw, and when the time comes, in Vilnius, but a lot of water will flow under the bridge before that happens”.
It is obvious from the letters that the composer already had a clear and thorough vision of the opera’s beginning and its first scene – the order of the characters’ appearances, the arrangement of the opera parts, the sequence of the choir’s entries, and similar details – but none of this was written and recorded in musical notation. In 1906–1909, when the composer was considering the possibilities of creating an opera, Čiurlionis’ works from that period, which have survived mainly in the form of sketches, reveal the composer’s diverse and subtle artistic world, dominated by marine imagery and fragments of folk songs, testifying to his very bold compositional strategies for that time. These sketches and fragments reveal how deeply Čiurlionis was immersed in his planned Lithuanian opera Jūratė.
Based on these sketches and fragments, the ideas and set drawings laid out in Čiurlionis’ letters, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to generate musical material, the large creative team created an imaginary opera Jūratė by M. K. Čiurlionis – a dream that Konstantinas himself never managed to fulfil.
The opera tells the legend of Jūratė, the queen of the sea, whose amber palace lies at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Jūratė falls in love with a man from the land – Kastytis, a brave and simple fisherman who disobeys the will of the gods and fishes in sacred waters forbidden to humans.
The gods, especially the mighty Perkūnas (Thunder), are enraged by the forbidden love between the divine queen and a mortal man. He strikes Jūratė’s amber palace with lightning, destroying it and separating the lovers. Kastytis drowns in the stormy sea, while Jūratė is condemned to mourn her lost love forever and shed
amber tears on the shores of the Baltic Sea. In fact, Čiurlionis wanted his opera to be open to interpretation and perhaps to testify to eternal love, so, as he had intended, the finale of imaginary opera Jūratė features the Eternal Duet.
Historical consultant: Rokas Zubovas
Libretto author: Julius Keleras
Composers: Mantautas Krukauskas, Arvydas Malcys, Mykolas Natalevičius
Director and puppet designer: Gintarė Radvilavičiūtė
Choreographer: Sigita Mikalauskaitė
Set and costume designer: Renata Valčik
Lighting designer: Eugenijus Sabaliauskas
Conductor: Karolis Variakojis
Soloists:
Jūratė – Lauryna Bendžiūnaitė (soprano)
Kastytis – Romanas Kudriašovas (baritone)
Perkūnas – Raimundas Juzuitis (bass)
Actors:
Konstantinas – Telman Ragimov
Sofija – Sigita Mikalauskaitė
Also appearing – Viktorija Aliukonė-Mirošnikova, Nikolaj Antonov, Jauhenas Bakala, Larisa Popova
Production assistant: Gina Busko
The opera libretto was translated into English by Julius Keleras
Producer: Operomanija
Co-producer: Vilnius Old Theatre
Partners: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Klaipėda Puppet Theatre, New Theatre, Lithuanian Composers’ Union
