Douglas J. Cuomo has enjoyed great success as a film and television composer, and is now being recognized in the concert world as well. His latest project is audaciousness personified. He's created a new work based on the same 24 poems by early 19th-century German poet Wilhelm Muller that Franz Schubert used for his great song cycle “Die Winterreise” (The Winter Journey).

Pittsburgh Opera will present the world premiere of Cuomo's “Ashes and Snow” Feb. 17 to 25 at its headquarters in Pittsburgh's Strip District.

The composer became aware of Muller's poems through Schubert's song cycle. The poems tell a story of rejected love, emotional turmoil and a longing for death.

“At some point I got the idea to use them as a jumping off point for something different from Schubert. I thought they have a lot to offer,” Cuomo says.

He created his own English translation of the German poems, sometimes hewing closely to the original, reimaging others in his translation, and setting some of them purely instrumentally.

“I knew I wanted something that was compact and I wanted to have an electronic component — electric guitar and an audio landscape,” he says. “I created a mix of different styles — rock elements and improvisation. The piano writing is very spare and has a lot of space in it.”

Staging “Ashes and Snow” is a labor of love for director Jonathan Moore.

“ ‘Die Winterreise' is one of my all-time favorite pieces. When my mom passed away, it was one of the pieces that got me through it, along with healthy dollops of Mozart,” he says. “The songs explore the nature of life, grief and yearning, are densely packed emotionally and philosophical in ambitions.”

His staging will provide context for the story, and use video projection as well as a set.

“One of the themes of the piece is the search for redemption and the need to grieve,” he says “Those type of big life choices suggested the setting to me.”

Young tenor Eric Ferring, one of the opera's resident artists who will sing in the world premiere, admires the way Cuomo has made something “completely different” in “Ashes and Snow.”

“There are subtle allusions to folk and jazz and rock,” Ferring says. “It's an interesting mixture with something for everyone.”

“Ashes and Snow” is the opera's second world premiere in as many years, which is no accident. The company's general director Christopher Hahn regularly goes to Opera America's New Works Forum, where he spoke with Cuomo last year. But the composer has been on Hahn's radar since his opera “Doubt.” Hahn jumped at the opportunity to present Cuomo's newest work, and teamed up with American Opera Project to bring it to the stage quickly.

Mark Kanny is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.

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