The American composer tells it on the mountain with her gritty, moving and award-winning Civil War-era opera.

Congratulations on producing such an intense, moving and multi-faceted new work. How long did it take, and how hard was it to find a subject for what is your first opera?

First, thank you for the wonderful compliment. The search for a story for the opera actually took me something like five years. I felt it was important to find a literary work that really resonated for me, and then there is always the struggle of getting the rights. I had a few stories that had to be discarded because the rights didn’t come through. When my librettist and I hit upon Cold Mountain, it felt like a fantastic fit. When I started the composing process, I worked for 28 months with most of that time spent composing and orchestrating, seven days a week. It was like living within the novel.

Apart from it’s compelling story, what specifically appealed about Cold Mountain from an operatic perspective?

On the most basic level, love and death seemed to drive so much of the story; it’s also very dramatic, especially in terms of...