In the new Sellars staging, Upshaw sings "Winds of Destiny" including that song about a soldier returning home after the war. She says it's one of the most astonishing moments in the song cycle.

Dawn Upshaw performs 'The Winds Of Destiny' at a dress rehearsal on June 8, 2011 in Ojai, California.

"There’s fear and there’s danger, and there’s even anger in the singer, because the singer yells at the ends of many phrases," Upshaw says. "That’s a really extreme and serious moment in the whole piece, one of several, but because it is taking this tune that we all kind of know from our past as being filled with a fair amount of pride or something, but it kind of turns it inside on itself, in this painful introspection."

Sellars has created a character and a narrative out of the original song cycle. A female U.S. soldier is returning home from the war in Afghanistan.

"And so the intensity with which women return and the harrowing experiences, both on the battlefield - things they’ve been asked to do that they cannot live with the rest of their lives - in addition to things that have happened to them that still can’t be talked about or acknowledged. It’s very, very intense," says Sellars.

Pianist Gilbert Kalish and the Red Fish Blue Fish percussion quartet accompany Upshaw on stage, and all the performers are dressed in camouflage.

Kalish says that Sellars' direction is subtle.