"Little Women”? That’s for girls.

Or so director Robert Swedberg remembered Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel of four New England sisters growing up just after the Civil War.

“I didn’t have the best experience with ‘Little Women.’ As a teen-age boy, it was not my favorite work” the University of Michigan music professor said in a recent phone conversation.

But encountering it again as he prepared Mark Adamo’s operatic translation of the Alcott book for the University of Michigan University Opera Theatre’s shows at Mendelssohn Theatre — well, that has been a different story.

“It’s all about relationships,” he said, “and it’s filled with wonderful things I keep discovering.”

What’s true of Alcott’s novel has proved true of Adamo’s opera — which since its 1998 debut at Houston Grand Opera has become one of the most frequently produced North American operas. (It's not to be confused with a musical-theater adaptation recently presented by the Encore Theatre in Dexter.)

“The music is accessible, yet fresh,” said Swedberg, “and the libretto, by the composer, is excellent, drawing on Transcendentalist sources as well as the novel.”

The novel, it turns out, was still familiar terrain for the student singers participating in the two, alternating casts, but their understanding of the characters — the March sisters (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, for those who need a refresher), their family and their intimate circle — has been enhanced by that most modern of tools, the Internet.

Swedberg and his artistic team — which includes conductor Christopher James Lees; scenic designer Corey Lubowich; costume designer Corey Davis; and lighting designer Sarah Petty; and assistant conductor Warren Puffer Jones (Sunday matinee) — have had access, on the U-M’s c-tools site, to everything from the Alcott book and the Adamo music to videos of rehearsals, director’s notes and research on the novel and the composer. Singers have even been encouraged to tweet about the opera from rehearsals to generate some buzz about the show. A recording of the opera was up on the site well before auditions, to give singers a leg up on what roles might suit them.

“All these things have helped us tremendously,” Swedberg said. There’s been room for 19th century tools, too: books like “The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott,” a 2010 novel by U-M alumna Kelly O’Connor McNees, have deepened the work of the cast and production team, Swedberg said.

“It’s really shaped my view of the period,” said Swedberg, noting that McNees hopes to be present to see the opera here.

And in preparation for leading the singers and the University Philharmonia, conductor Lees has been in correspondence with composer Adamo.

Adamo, writing about the opera on his website, describes the opera’s main theme as how the characters cope with time and change — a Straussian theme familiar to opera-goers who love “Rosenkavalier” and other Strauss works. Swedberg concurs.

“I think definitely that the whole piece is wrapped around time and change. Things change, Jo changes, Meg changes.”

The desire to “rewind time,” as Swedberg describes it, permeates the opera — in its structure as well as its music.

“The musical structure underpins that whole approach to it,” said Swedberg, referring to the flashbacks and forward projections of Adamo’s operatic architecture.

The architecture of the actual U-M production, taking its cues from the opera itself, may remind viewers of Broadway.

“At one point, there are six different scenes going on at once,” he said. “It’s more like a Broadway musical that way.”

It all pleases Swedberg, who has come a long way from his teen-age experience of the book.

“I’m loving the piece,” he said, venturing: “I think it has a lot greater appeal than the novel might.

“There is nothing more exciting in my opinion that experiencing a live opera production — the kind of energy that is in the auditorium from the stage to the audience then back again is something palpable. For those who have never had this experience, ‘Little Women’ is a great first opera.”