Boston Lyric Opera commissions music alum to write chamber opera

Richard Beaudoin's new work to be paired with Ullman's 'The Emperor of Atlantic'

Composer Richard Beaudoin was commissioned by the Boston Lyric Opera to write a chamber opera that could be paired with Victor Ullman's "The Emperor of Atlantis."

Beaudoin received his Ph.D. in music composition from Brandeis University and is now a music lecturer at Harvard University. His new work "The After-Image," is to be paired with the one-act opera Ullman wrote during his incarceration at the Theresienstadt concentration camp before his death in Auschwitz.

"The After-Image" is based on texts from poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Friedrich Ruckert, and pioneer photographer William Henry Fox Talbot, and depicts a moment of interaction between a woman and a photograph of her late father.