Taking care of how one works on operas (9)
I believe the answer is:
mothering
'taking care of' is the definition.
'how one works on operas' is the wordplay.
'how one works' becomes 'mo' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another (in a down clue, letters appear on others).
'operas' becomes 'The Ring' (The Ring, cycle of operas by Richard Wagner).
'mo'+'thering'='MOTHERING'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for mothering that I've seen is " Looking after".)