Hannah Lash was just 28 when her first chamber opera, “Blood Rose,” premiered in 2010. But while it was a success, Ms. Lash was not fully satisfied with the piece, which drew on the story of “Beauty and the Beast” to explore themes of vulnerability, conflict and intimacy.

“I realized,” she said in a recent interview, “that in order to say what I wanted to say better, I needed to be just a little bit older and just a little bit craftier.”

Nearly a decade older and substantially craftier, Ms. Lash has returned to some of the same thematic territory in her new work, “Desire,” which premieres at the Miller Theater at Columbia University on Wednesday. A stylized allegory, the opera meditates on the wonder, struggle and ephemeral nature of the creative process, of finding one’s own voice. It is also chamber music in the truest sense of the term: The septet of performers (a string quartet and three singers) will perform without a conductor, a rarity for opera of any size.