For a musical theater composer, a Tony Award is a dream come true on Broadway, but it won't give you 50 voices singing on stage. To achieve that kind of grandeur, Jeanine Tesori , the Tony-winning composer of “Kimberly Akimbo” and “Fun Home,” turns to opera: Her latest work, “ Grounded ,” features an orchestra of 80 musicians and a cast of 60 performers.

Listen to this week’s “ Stagecraft ” podcast below:

Based on the 2014 play that starred Anne Hathaway in a 2015 Off Broadway run , “Grounded” marks Tesori’s Metropolitan Opera debut in a production directed by another theater-world crossover, Michael Mayer (“A Beautiful Noise,” the upcoming “Swept Away”). “When you have an orchestra of 80 people, just the string section alone is unlike anything,” Tesori said on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast. “The response that I have hearing it… I’m so moved by it, just the sheer number of people that you can’t get anywhere else.”

“Grounded,” written by Tesori and playwright-librettist George Brandt, follows a talented female pilot who is reassigned to operate combat drones used in wartime operations half a world away. That military setting, Tesori said, was one of the factors that suggested to her that “Grounded” was more of an opera than a musical.

“The military environment is so full of rhythm and cadence,” she explained. “In the drum call, the cadence is about keeping people physically unified and all doing the same thing simultaneously, which to me is akin to choral work. It’s simply a completely sung-through world. Plus, there’s such an epic nature to this story of a woman and her desire to protect the country, and the way that patriotism operates, and the way that it’s used to work against us.”

Also included in the latest Stagecraft, Tesori discussed the national tour of the Tony-winning “Kimberly Akimbo,” commencing later this month, and the new version of the musical she co-created with David Henry Hwang, “Soft Power,” currently being performed at the D.C. area’s Signature Theatre in a revised version condensed to 90 minutes.

She also mentioned her efforts to attract as many theater professionals as possible to Lincoln Center to experience “Grounded” in one of the world’s most renowned opera houses. “A lot of people in my [theater] world have said, ‘Where is the Met?’ And I think: ‘Where is the Met?! I mean, do you see the massive fountain? It’s right behind that!'”

To hear the entire conversation, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts , Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network . New episodes of “Stagecraft” are released every other week.