BrunnhAilde | A world first Ai animated Wagnerian experience

A feature length generative-AI live opera experience

World First for Live Opera

Live International Ensemble

Three singers, five saxophones, piano and conductor perform the score on stage. Each performance is sung in the language of its audience — Japanese in Tokyo, Hebrew in Tel Aviv, English in London French in Paris — while the film remains visually continuous. The production travels as a framework that local productions can inhabit, merging cultures through shared music and AI-crafted imagery.

Gen-AI Animation

A new artistic intelligence joins the rehearsal room. Under the guidance of the creator/producer/music director, Dr. David Kram and art-animation director, Dr. Jack Parry, the generative system acts as a “stochastic bull” — wild, intuitive, and unpredictable — pushing against human intention until new imagery and rhythm emerge. Each frame is selected, graded, and composed like cinema, transforming the Rhinegold myth into a co-authored performance between people and machine.

Showreel

Ethical AI

BrunnhAilde pays homage to the long visual legacy of Wagnerian opera. Its AI-generated imagery draws inspiration from nineteenth-century engravings, etchings, and lithographs—those intricate scenes that first gave form to the mythic Rhine and its gods. Every generated frame is composed in dialogue with that archive: chiaroscuro lighting, etched linework, and gold-leaf tonalities echo the craftsmanship of classical printmakers. Rather than replacing tradition, the generative process re-animates it—respecting the opera’s status as a cultural artefact while extending it into a living, algorithmic medium. Ethical AI here means stewardship: treating past artists as collaborators across time, ensuring the visual language of a century ago remains present inside the new one.

Team

Creative

Dr. David Kram

Creator/Producer
Dr David Kram AM, Artistic Director of the MTO-German-Australian Opera Grant and of Concertori Recordings (USA) and Senior Fellow, The University of Melbourne, is a distinguished conductor, artistic director, academic, composer and pianist in Europe, Australia and Asia. He is creator/artistic director/conductor of the AI-animated multimedia opera Brunnhailde and in 2024-25, conductor for Berlin Opera Academy.

Dr. Jack Parry

Animation Director
Dr Jack Parry is an interdisciplinary researcher with a PhD in philosophy and animation, with over 25 years experience in animation production. He also holds a Bachelor of computer and Electronic Engineering (Hons 1), with postgraduate training in data modelling and stochastic coding. Jack applies this expertise in visual animated communication, A.I. data modelling and the philosophy of transcendental phenomenology to gain a unique perspective in the new frontiers of the use of A.I in animated film production. Jack also speaks 5 languages.

Cast

Livia Brash

Livia Brash is an Emerging Artist with Melbourne Opera, where this year she covered the role of Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) with the company in their historic performance at the Royal Exhibition Building under the baton of Anthony Negus, and made her debut in the title role of Rusalka for Boroondara Art's Opera in the Park.

James Egglestone

Dual Helpmann Award-winning, one of Australia’s finest tenors. 2021/2022 engagements included Loge (Das Rheingold) and Jimmy (Mahagonny) for Melbourne Opera, Aegisth (Elektra) and Bob Cratchit (A Christmas Carol) for Victorian Opera and Tell-Tale Heart for State Opera of South Australia. He won the 2022 Green Room Award for Loge in Das Rheingold. In 2023, he sang Loge and Siegmund in Melbourne Opera’s Der Ring des Nibelungen; in 2024, he sang Luigi (Il tabarro) for Victorian Opera and appears in Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in Canberra.

Musicians

Konrad Olszewski

Konrad Olszewski is a professional pianist who is in great demand as a performer, accompanist, repetiteur and teacher.He completed his Master of Music degree with a postgraduatescholarship at the University of Melbourne, studying with Glenn Riddle. While at Melbourne University Konrad received many awards including the J.S Bach Prize, the Lady Turner Exhibition Prize and the Searle Piano Faculty Merit Scholarship.

Antoine Flores Gracia

Antoine Flores Gracia was born in Arafo (Tenerife, Spain) in January 1995. After finishing his Bachelor's degree in Saxophone Performance at Musikene – Conservatorio del País Vasco (Spain) – he pursued a Master's in Classical Saxophone Performance at the prestigious Sibelius Academy in Helsinki under Joonatan Rautiola. Additionally, he completed a Master's in Education and a Master's in Musical Research at the Valencia International University (Spain).

Jason Ji

Born in Beijing, Jason Ji is a Chinese-Australian saxophonist and educator, recently graduating from his Bachelor of Music (Honours) in Music Performance at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. He began playing the saxophone at the age of 12 after short stints of learning the piano, violin, and clarinet. His passion for the classical saxophone was ignited throughout his studies with Joseph Lallo and Martin Hemingway.

Brandon Bartholomeusz

Brandon Bartholomeusz is a Sri Lankan and Macedonian Australian, who grew up in Adelaide, where music and performance were always central to his life. After receiving a scholarship to study saxophone at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, he moved to Naarm in 2019 to begin his Bachelor of Music (Performance). Brandon’s studies were interrupted by the pandemic and a brief two-year stint studying medicine in Adelaide, but since returning to Naarm in 2023, he completed his bachelor’s, commenced his honours, and worked tirelessly to hone his skills.