But for Ms. Zimmerman, the fourth time may be a charm. If she never quite found her footing in the rigid conventions of bel canto, there is more in common with her theater work in the later, dreamier, more epic “Rusalka.” Ms. Zimmerman’s concept for the opera, conducted by Mark Elder and starring Kristine Opolais, Brandon Jovanovich, Eric Owens and Jamie Barton, evokes both Romanticism and the receding flats of classical theater; the costume silhouettes evoke both the French 17th century and the Victorian era.

“I feel I’m at the core of what I’m interested in and have been all my life,” Ms. Zimmerman said of the piece. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

This is really, so long after “Metamorphoses,” you going back in the water.

I think if I had not had my fill of water, as it were, if I’d never done that, we might have started from a point of real water, because it’s so beautiful. But in repertory, it’s literally nearly impossible. So we started from the woods, the fairy tale woods, the hidden woods. If you read the instruction in the score, it does say “Woods and a meadow by a pond,” even if people tend to put the pond really front and center.

Was it a work you had wanted to do?

Peter [Gelb] suggested it for me. I was going to do “Pearl Fishers,” but sometimes finances are such that if there’s a good production around, it’s easier to just borrow one. [Penny Woolcock’s production of that Bizet opera came to the Met in 2015.] When he broke that news to me, he said, “But I’d like you to do ‘Rusalka’ instead.” I’d seen Renée [Fleming] sing it live in HD, and I was working with her on “Armida” when she was doing it here. So I knew it a little bit, and when he suggested it, I felt it was right for me. The thing that was heartbreaking was that it was in Czech. That was and remains the most intimidating thing about it, for a theater director especially. Where they’re saying this and that, but you don’t know the exact word.