Dies Irae, Desirée
A Chamber Opera for the Digital Age
Dies Irae, Desirée is a new chamber opera that takes a critical but empathetic look at cults, fanaticism, and how the internet fosters an emotional vacuum where extremists can plant, nourish, and accelerate fringe belief systems.
Through a blend of satire, multimedia world-building, and a score that moves between ecstatic and unsettling, we are dramatizing a doomsday UFO cult that gathers again and again for a promised event: the night an alien civilization will carry the faithful to another galaxy.
The narrative unfolds in the fictional world of The Kinship, a UFO cult led by Desirée, a charismatic leader who claims to communicate with a cosmic emissary from the distant solar system of Elyrha. As the group anticipates their promised ascension to the planets of Elyrha, the chamber opera follows their journey through hope, faith, disillusionment, and public scorn, offering both a critique of the growing mainstream influence of conspiratorial thinking and a tragic-comic portrait of people seeking meaning in increasingly absurd ways.
Dies Irae, Desirée will be premiered by Third Angle New Music in March 2026.
The Creative Team
Maria Finkelmeier | Composer / Co-Director / Conductor + Electronics
Third Angle New Music’s Guest Creative Director, Maria is known for kinetic, vibrant works that fuse live music, electronics, and multimedia storytelling.
Brady Walker | Librettist / Co-Director
A writer focused on stories where the psychological, the absurd, and the culturally urgent collide.
Supreetha Krishnan | Interactive Visual Designer / Animator
A digital artist bringing data visualization, animation, and interactive systems to life.
CAST
Sarah Beaty, mezzo soprano
Quinton Gardner, bass-baritone
Madeline Tran, soprano
3A ARTISTS:
Sarah Tiedemann, flute
William Pyle, saxophone
Valdine Ritchie, cello
Chris Whyte, percussion
We’ve spent the past year and a half on the story and music. Now, we need your help to build Desirée’s world.
Thanks to the ensemble and boundary breaking organization, Third Angle New Music, the premiere is already supported with:
World-class musicians
The venue
Travel support & base production costs
But the heart of this opera — the multimedia design, the cult’s evolving aesthetics, and the ability to document the work — remains unfunded.
Just as it’s hard to understand movements like QAnon without understanding the digital ecosystems that sustained them, it’s impossible to dramatize a modern cult without showing that online architecture at work. We are in the final stretch to deliver the immersive, multi-sensory world this story deserves.
Thanks to our Fiscal Sponsor, Departure Arts, you can get in on the action by donating to join the Elyrhan Society and be featured in the Chamber Opera itself!
Maria Finkelmeier
Named a “one-woman dynamo” by the Boston Globe, Maria is a percussionist, composer, new media artist, and Associate Professor of Creative Entrepreneurship at Berkee College of Music.
Obsessed with making noise, she transformed Fenway Park into a percussive playground and turned the Roebling Bridge into a sound and light instrument. She's used AI to investigate gender bias through music, flipped a bus into a mobile electronic bucket drumming program, and performed at iconic global venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian, and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Her cutting-edge work has been featured in the Boston Globe, National Parks Magazine, Boston Magazine, Vulture, SunSentinel, I Care if you Listen and on WGBH, WBUR, and CBS. She is the Founder of the experimental music, art, and technology studio, MF Dynamics, and holds a BM from The Ohio State University and MM from the Eastman School of Music. She is a Yamaha Performing Artist.
Brady Walker
Brady Evan Walker is a Portland-based, Cajun-bred writer hailing from south of where you think Louisiana ends. His short films have been showcased at festivals including the Williamsburg Independent Film Festival,
Blackbird Film Festival, Coney Island Film Festival (Winner: Best Comedy Short), Lighthouse Film Festival, Key West Film Festival, jellyFEST (Nominated: Best Short Film, Best Actress, Best Picture), Malarkey Film Festival, Sedona Film Festival, Taos Short Film Festival, and Queens World Film Festival (Nominated: Best Comedy Short, Best Ensemble — Narrative Short).
Most recently, he wrote “Lay Lefty Down”—a breast cancer comedy directed by Traven Rice now entering the festival circuit. In March 2026, “Dies Irae, Desirée” marks his debut as a librettist, extending his work across film, literature, and performance. He is currently writing a novel and developing new digital text art projects that blur narrative and visual art.