Vilnius to present possibly the first ever AI-generated opera

Bringing lost music back from the oblivion of the past

The City of Vilnius has prepared a grand surprise for residents and guests as part of its 700^th-anniversary ongoing celebrations this year. On 29 and 30 September, music aficionados will have the chance to hear for the first time an entire opera “Andromeda”, whose music, created in the mid-17^th century, is considered to have been long lost.

However, the revival of the artwork will be possible not due to some unexpected archival discovery, but rather thanks to the concerted efforts to recreate it with the help of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called DI model Martin Malandro. Thus, this might also be the first AI-generated opera in the world.

The only thing that had survived from “Andromeda” until our days is its libretto written Virgilio Puccitelli (1599-1654). It is believed that the composer was another Baroque-era Italian by the name of Marco Scacchi (c.1602 – c. 1662).

Both of these artists were in the service of king Vladislaus Vasa, ruler of the joint Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and helped create the first operas ever performed in these lands.

Baroque music with 21^st-century flavour

In order to recover the lost music, an international team of creators used the AI tool and trained it on the surviving works of Marco Scacchi and his contemporaries.

The music was recreated by the Lithuanian composer Mantautas Krukauskas with the help of artificial intelligence, edited by the Latvian early music researcher and composer Māris Kupčs. 

In that sense, the experts warn that what the audience will hear will not be the opera that was heard by the 17th-century audience, but rather a contemporary interpretation of what the opera might have sounded like.

It’s known that “Andromeda” was first performed for the royal audience in 1644 at the Lower Castle of Vilnius. In that spirit, the contemporary performance of the revived version will take place at the Palace of the Grand Dukes in Vilnius on 29-30 September.