OPERA San Antonio will stage an 80-minute chamber opera about a critically injured service member across four military-connected settings from February 2 through 7, 2027.
The announcement landed on Veterans Day, November 11, and the point is not another downtown opening night. OPERA San Antonio says The Falling and the Rising, by composer Zach Redler and librettist Jerre Dye, will be presented with The Orchestra San Antonio and the 323d Army Band.
The Woman at the Center
The story follows an unnamed female service member who is critically injured by a roadside IED and placed in a medically induced coma. CultureMap San Antonio reports that, while she recovers, she moves through dreamlike encounters with fellow troops.
It is a chamber piece, not a pageant. Eighty minutes, American, and built from other people's accounts rather than a single named biography. CTX Live Theatre says the opera was created from firsthand interviews with active-duty service members, veterans, and military families.
That interview trail is the whole method. The company is not pitching a documentary, and it is not asking the audience to treat one fictional soldier as every soldier.
Commissioned With the Band
OPERA San Antonio says the work was co-commissioned in 2016 in partnership with the U.S. Army Field Band & Soldiers' Chorus. It reached the stage later. A Slippedisc report says the world premiere was in 2018 at Texas Christian University, and WEAR-TV describes the piece as based on stories from combat veterans.
CultureMap traces an earlier pitch to tenor Ben Hilgert, who in 2015 was with that Soldiers' Chorus and proposed telling the Army's story through opera. He is set to produce the San Antonio run.
Hilgert has said military stories are personal to San Antonio residents, and that bringing the opera here feels like bringing it home. The project is designed for military-connected participants to see themselves represented onstage. Executive director E. Loren Meeker, in the company announcement, called the project one "built from military voices, performed alongside members of the military community, and designed to create connection."
Four Rooms Instead of One House
The February 2–7 run is planned for VFW Post 76, Boeing Center at Tech Port, Brooke Army Medical Center, and Fort Sam Houston Theatre.
The announcement lists those settings across the week. It does not publish a night-by-night grid, so the useful fact is the circuit, not a guessed curtain time. Orchestra San Antonio musicians will play alongside active-duty soldiers from the 323d Army Band, known as Fort Sam's Own.
OperaWire frames the production as created with and for San Antonio's military community, rather than as a conventional opera-house stand. A VFW hall, a medical center, a fort theater, and a tech-port venue is a strange booking block for a chamber score. It is also the argument the company is making about who the show is for.
A Free Preview and Community Singers
CTX Live Theatre says a community preview is free, reservations are required, and attendance is limited to 200 people.
The company has a chorus of community singers.
The Same Opera, Other Cities
San Antonio is not the first city to put military voices in the cast as well as the score. WEAR-TV, covering Pensacola Opera, quotes a company description of a military chorus "comprised of local, Pensacola veterans and service members."
Pensacola has two performances scheduled for November 20 and 21, both at 7:30 p.m., at the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts. That listing gives the opera in English, a 75-minute runtime, general admission at $30, and student tickets at $15. San Antonio's announcement describes an 80-minute piece.
Farther back, San Diego Opera had performances scheduled for May 8, 9, and 10, 2020, at the Balboa Theatre, including a May 9 performance at 7:30 p.m. and a May 10 matinee at 2 p.m.
The San Antonio run takes place during the first week of February, with a reservation-only community preview held to 200 people and the rest of the run spread across those four military-connected rooms.
