War and Peace is often seen as the Mount Everest of novels. A daunting door-stopper of a tome, at almost 1,500 pages, it is rarely finished. Rita McAllister, who is adapting an opera version of Tolstoy's novel for its world premiere in Glasgow this weekend, confesses with a sheepish laugh that even she has "not quite made it to the end yet. I read it as a student, but I haven't quite finished it this time around".
She admits that "there are a lot of pages in War and Peace that don't exactly have you biting your nails", but she also considers it a beautiful story with a timeless, Gone with the Wind appeal.
"It's more than just a gripping love story," she says. "It's historically pretty accurate, too. It's an account of the Napoleonic wars from the point of view of a soldier, which Tolstoy was. He brings in his world views and his philosophies on life and war. From a literary point of view, it's simply a fantastic work."
The version of War and Peace that will be staged at the Theatre Royal on Friday uses Prokofiev's original score. Although the Russian pianist and composer began writing the opera in 1941, he spent more than 10 years making changes to it, to meet the approval of Communist Party censors. What audiences will see in Glasgow is Prokofiev's unadulterated, "de-Sovietised" masterpiece.
"Bring your hankies," warns McAllister. "The score is tuneful, but there are also scenes that are incredibly moving."
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Set at the beginning of the 19th century, Tolstoy's novel opens with a high-society soirée in St Petersburg, where the book's main character, Pierre Bezukhov and his sharp-tongued friend, Prince Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky are first introduced.
Spanning decades and thousands of miles, and taking in wolf-hunts, vodka drinking, bloody battles, unrequited love and Freemasonry, War and Peace is a dense, painstakingly detailed story. A stage adaptation was an ambitious project, and one that required more than 230 cast and crew members, including Russian voice coaches, costume designers, make-up artists and musicians.
McAllister, the former viceprincipal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, which is staging the production with Scottish Opera, is considered a world expert on Prokofiev.
"What Prokofiev first came up with was something very personal; essentially a web spun around the three main characters," she says.
In the years leading to his death in 1953, the composer's health was deteriorating, and he became increasingly keen to have his opera performed. "By the end he was just desperate to see it staged," says McAllister.
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"He ended up with something that lasted well over four hours and needed to be performed over two nights. In its entirety, it was so overblown, and that's why it's not earned the reputation that it truly deserves," she says.
To find out what Prokofiev had intended for his opera, she went to Moscow to find original manuscripts that had been turned down by the Communist authorities. Prokofiev's family gave their full support to the project.
"The family realise this new version may raise awareness of what many, including me, consider to be the masterpiece of Prokofiev's late career. They have seen the score and are really happy with the outcome," she says.
Prokofiev's grandson, Gabriel Prokofiev, a garage producer and rock composer, will be attending a conference in Glasgow before the opening night.
McAllister is looking forward to seeing her project being staged, then taking the production to Rostov-on-Don, one of Glasgow's twin towns, where it will be performed in March.
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"Some people get put off by the number of characters in War and Peace, and all the twists and turns of the plot. But to me, there are so many reasons to love the story," says McAllister. "There are the party scenes, which are just delightful and frothy, then the incredibly sad battle scenes. The beauty of opera is it can really capture all those emotions."
War and Peace, Friday and Saturday, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, and January 28 and January 30, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh; www.rsamd.ac.uk