RAI PRIZE winner Prix Italia 1978.
Composer Viktor Ullman and librettist Peter Kien wrote "Emperor" on the backside of SS deportation forms in Theresienstadt, a German concentration camp. In 1944 Ullmann and Kien were deported to the Auschwitz gas chambers. The opera - subtitled "Death Abdicates" - survived the war and was performed 30 years later.