The Lyric Opera of Chicago premiere of Handel's "Hercules," this weekend at the Civic Opera House, brings together some of today's foremost Handel singers in a boldly updated staging by Peter Sellars that promises to send shock waves of recognition pulsing through the theater.

Its theme is as old as the ancient Greeks and as new as the headlines out of Kandahar, Afghanistan: The post-traumatic stress that combat veterans bring home with them infects everyone around them no less insidiously than themselves.

The ever-provocative American stage director has built his reputation on finding urgent contemporary relevance in everything he creates for the opera and concert stages. True to form, Sellars has transformed George Frideric Handel's Baroque music drama about the mythological hero's homecoming into a ripped-from-the-headlines domestic tragedy for the age of Iraq and Afghanistan.

His production promises to be much closer in substance and spirit to the bloody violence of Sophocles' tragedy "The Women of Trachis" - the literary source of Handel's 1744 quasi-oratorio, along with Ovid's "Metamorphoses" - than the prim, smiley-faced libretto Thomas Broughton, an English reverend, presented to Handel.

Although Handel had turned from opera to oratorio by the time he composed "Hercules," the work's acute psychological portraiture, so ahead of its time, has proved a potent lure for modern stage directors. The 53-year-old Sellars is the latest to ferret out the human truths in a piece that cries out for representation on the operatic stage, even though Handel designed it as a concert work.

In Sellars' version, Hercules becomes an American general (bass-baritone Eric Owens) returning to his swank hillside home in Southern California, where his devoted wife, Dejanira (mezzo-soprano Alice Coote), her son Hyllus (tenor Richard Croft), the herald Lichas (countertenor David Daniels) and a presumably quiet retirement await.

We soon realize that something is terribly wrong with this picture. The conquering hero has brought with him a beautiful young woman named Iole (soprano Lucy Crowe). Is she his spoils of war, mistress or both? Her presence understandably arouses suspicion, anguish and jealousy in Dejanira and suggests Hercules' deep disconnect from reality. Thus is set into motion a chain of events that inevitably leads to fiery catastrophe.

Sellars, Coote and conductor Harry Bicket recently took time out from their herculean labors on the new production - which includes set, costume and lighting designs by Sellars regulars George Tsypin, Dunya Ramicova and James F. Ingalls, respectively - to talk about what can make a work written some 267 years ago speak so powerfully to contemporary audiences. Following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q: Peter, what was it about Handel's text and music that suggested this particular dramatic conception?

Sellars: Once Handel shut down his opera company and turned to writing oratorios, he was no longer limited by the theater of his time - he could create the drama of his imagination. Pieces like "Hercules" really occupy tragic ground in a way that (his) operas don't begin to approach. Handel, who battled mental illness across his life, was deeply attached to people's suffering - it's one of the things that motivated him as a composer. He wanted his music to offer consolation and some recovery space. I think that's why the music is so heartbreakingly beautiful and why it touches us so deeply today.

The ending really is about the veterans. This morning I met with 17 armed forces veterans who have taken part in every war America fought from World War II to the present. What the oldest person there said he went through matched (what) the youngest person went through. The loneliness, detachment, fear, worry - all the things we associate with post-traumatic stress disorder - they are living with their entire lives.

Soldiers can't tell people back home what they're struggling with, and their spouses and family members have serious issues of their own. So you get this incredible vacuum filled with people's worst fears and unrealistic expectations. What we can do as artists is restore the human face to bald statistics in congressional reports and (show) how these issues work in this particular piece.

Q: Dejanira must be one of the richest roles musically and dramatically you have ever sung onstage, Alice. How does Handel's music bring out her various psychological states, and how does it feel to immerse yourself in this fascinating character?

Coote: My role covers absolutely the gamut of that experience of trying (to achieve) love and connection right through to complete failure, and the isolation that brings about. This is probably more of an in-the-moment role than I've ever sung before in Handel. Each aria is a visceral reaction to the situation in which Dejanira finds herself.

The dramatic gestures Peter is finding take us as performers beyond the music into the emotional structure of the piece, and that's challenging. Some of it is a bit too overwhelming for me. Every day, at some point in the rehearsals, I find myself weeping.

By the end of the piece, I suppose Dejanira is like any of us who don't get our needs met or don't manage to find a path where we love in the right way. These people end up in utter despair and sorrow. I have seen members of my family in that state. I feel it myself quite frequently. It is a true human state.

Q: Harry, how would you assess the musical merits of the score? Is it right up there with the great Handel operas such as "Alcina" and "Giulio Cesare"?

Bicket: There's no question in my mind that "Hercules" is a masterpiece. There is a long connection from this piece through the "reform" operas of Gluck to the great serious operas of Mozart, such as "Idomeneo." I even hear Verdi in Handel's final scene. Some of the music just seems to come from another planet. In his middle years Handel wrote beautiful melodies and crowd-pleasers. Later on, miraculous works like "Hercules" came along. It's almost as if he were looking forward and backward at the same time in this work.

Q: What makes the character of Hercules tick psychologically, Peter?

Sellars: Handel's genius was to give him only three arias. He's present all the time but silent, and that is more disturbing than if he had 10 more arias. That silence is eloquent, painful and menacing, to him and to the people around him. It's like that with every combat veteran. They don't want to tell anyone what's going on in their heads - in fact, they are unable to articulate it even to themselves. One of Hercules' issues is his unwillingness to open up. And one of the things that creates violence is silence, a breakdown in communications.

"Hercules" is music you really don't ever quite recover from. I found it really extraordinary that, after years of talking about it, it came into being with this cast, at this moment, in this city. For me, one of the most profound things about working in this building is what it says on the front: Civic Opera House. We are doing something with a civic purpose! Opera is not just an entertainment for an idle leisure class. Opera has nutritional value. Opera is about finding a way to talk about difficult things, and talk about them with compassion, understanding, insight and the healing balm of music. We hope we have been able to achieve that.