OPERA San Antonio Announces Citywide Military Community Production of The Falling and the Rising
SAN ANTONIO, TX (November 11, 2026) — On Veterans Day, OPERA San Antonio (OSA) announces The Falling and the Rising, an 80-minute American chamber opera by composer Zach Redler and librettist Jerre Dye, to be presented February 2–7, 2027, through a citywide Community Impact Series created with and for San Antonio’s military community. Co-commissioned in 2016 in partnership with the U.S. Army Field Band & Soldiers’ Chorus, The Falling and the Rising was developed through extensive interviews with active-duty service members, veterans, military families, and communities connected to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and other military installations. The opera follows Soldier, an unnamed female service member who is critically injured by a roadside IED and placed in a medically induced coma. Through a dreamlike series of encounters with fellow service members, she moves toward recovery, clarity, family, and the possibility of coming home.
“This project gives OPERA San Antonio an opportunity to use the stage as a true civic gathering place,” said E. Loren Meeker, Executive Director of OPERA San Antonio and stage director of the production. “The Falling and the Rising is not simply an opera about military service—it is a project built from military voices, performed alongside members of the military community, and designed to create connection between those who serve, the families who serve beside them, and the broader city. In America’s 250th anniversary year, sharing this story across Military City USA feels both deeply local and deeply American.”
Developed and announced during America’s 250th anniversary year, OSA’s San Antonio project expands the opera into a broader civic experience for Military City USA.
From Producer Ben Hilgert: “The Falling and the Rising started as a way to put real soldiers’ stories on an opera stage. San Antonio is a city where those stories are not abstract. They are your neighbors, your coworkers, your family. Bringing the opera here, where service runs through the whole community, feels like bringing it home.”
The citywide series is designed to create a shared experience in which military-connected participants see themselves represented, civilian audiences encounter authentic stories of service, and attendees can connect directly with people and organizations that support San Antonio’s military community. In San Antonio, OSA is expanding the opera beyond a 1 traditional performance venue by bringing it to four military-connected settings across the city: VFW Post 76, Boeing Center at Tech Port, Brooke Army Medical Center, and Fort Sam Houston Theatre. The Falling and the Rising is presented in collaboration with The Orchestra San Antonio and the 323d Army Band (“Fort Sam’s Own”), placing active-duty military musicians and San Antonio’s professional symphonic artists side by side in a production created from military experience.