Igern was an opera composer whose most widely known work was the opera Chalice and Altar, which was famed for dealing with the themes of repressing desire and the morality of self-sacrifice. During the reign of the Galactic Empire, students in the Core Worlds Classical Culture class at the Royal Imperial Academy on the planet Coruscant studied this composer's works. Several years before the Battle of Yavin, the class's professor asked his students what Igern's most famous work was, and was correctly answered by the student Ciena Ree; however, when Ree could not answer what themes the opera was best known for, her classmate Thane Kyrell provided the answer instead.