“My maternal grandfather, who was a humble gardener, loved Verdi and Puccini,” the Danish composer Poul Ruders recalled recently. “And when I was 10 or 11, he took me first to see ‘La Bohème,’ and then to see ‘Aida.’”

“But the experience,” he added, “did not turn me into an opera freak. I only know a few operas — perhaps four or five.”

He was being either modest or mischievous: Mr. Ruders has by now composed five operas of his own. As he spoke, seated alongside Becky and David Starobin — the librettists of his most recent opera, “The Thirteenth Child” — in a Boston hotel room in May, Mr. Ruders, 70, was awaiting the opening of Boston Lyric Opera’s starkly powerful new production of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (2000), his second and most acclaimed work for the stage.