This isn't just a brilliant conclusion to the season. The new production of Handel's "Hercules" at Lyric Opera of Chicago goes well beyond that.

It could be an important springboard for a renewed civic and, indeed, national conversation about issues concerning America's war veterans, issues many people would just as soon sweep under a rug. What happens to these soldiers when they return home, bringing their post-traumatic stress with them? Having turned off their emotions for combat, how do they turn them back on with the family and friends they left behind?

The answer, in director Peter Sellars' thoughtful and enthralling new production, which opened Friday night at the Civic Opera House, is they don't. And this can spell disaster.

Handel's 1744 musical drama spun the source, Sophocles' play "The Women of Trachis," into a proper Enlightenment oratorio that ends, neatly and happily, with the chorus extolling "liberty's immortal song." Sellars relates this Handelian gloss on the ancient Greek tragedy to the psychological toll sustained by the participants in war, whether those wars happen to be in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or wherever. A superb cast, orchestra and chorus put a human face on war's awful truths as they work across the vast emotional trajectory of Handel's music.

"Veterans' issues cannot be hijacked by current politics," Sellars declared in one of his pre-performance talks last week. As if to prove the point, Lyric is partnering with the Office of Civic Engagement at the University of Chicago, A Safe Haven Foundation and the McCormick Foundation to bridge the world of opera and the gritty reality members of our armed forces must face following their tours of duty. Some 200 former soldiers attended the dress rehearsal. At a panel discussion afterwards, several of them spoke movingly of how closely events in the opera mirrored their own experiences.

Even so, it took a Sellars to prove "Hercules" can address the issues of today with such burning urgency on today's operatic stage. With the three acts compressed into two, and substantial cuts to Handel's score, the show runs more than three hours but doesn't feel a second too long.

Sellars and his regular team of designers - George Tsypin (sets), Dunya Ramicova (costumes), James F. Ingalls (lighting) - place "Hercules" in a minimalist unit set framed by rows of ruined classical columns, bathed in bold red lighting. The décor echoes ancient Greece while the costumes, including combat fatigues and a Guantanamo-detainee orange jumpsuit, locate the action plainly in the present. The rubble strewn about the stage suggests the physical devastation of war even as the music tells of more subtle psychic devastation.

The conquering general Hercules (bass-baritone Eric Owens, born to sing the role) knew who he was on the battlefield but doesn't have a clue who he is in his own home. The war hero has brought back as his trophy a beautiful princess named Iole (British soprano Lucy Crowe, a major discovery indeed). Dejanira, Hercules' devoted wife (British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, in a riveting performance), suspects Iole is his concubine. Locked in his visions of past glories, Hercules won't, or can't, explain his bizarre, withdrawn behavior.

Dejanira reaches out in vain, eventually turning to booze and pills for solace. Both Iole and Lichas, Hercules' trusted aide (countertenor David Daniels, wonderfully attuned to Handelian style, as ever), warn her of the perils of jealousy. Hyllus, the son of Hercules and Dejanira (tenor Richard Croft, firmly in his vocal element here), feels compassion for the captive Iole, whose father died at Hercules' hand.

Purists will argue that Handel's original is about love, infidelity and jealousy, not post-traumatic stress. So what? Ultimately, the verities Handel knew and captured so brilliantly in his music leap across time and space in Sellars' inspired update.

Handel really should have called the work "Dejanira," for she is its musical and dramatic fulcrum. Hercules' spurned wife works through the opera's emotional Stations of the Cross - from elation, doubt, confusion and jealousy, to rage and remorse. Not only does Coote sing all her arias gloriously, this accomplished singing actress uses telling facial expression and body language to create a character with whom one can fully empathize and, finally, pity.

Along with Dejanira's music, Iole's meltingly beautiful arias lift "Hercules" well above the musical level of just about any of Handel's English stage works. Crowe nails every aria with a pure, peachy soprano that inhabits every phrase to ineffably touching effect. She also carries herself with great, fragile grace and, in so doing, further draws us to her side. The season has brought no brighter discovery.

Croft is a model of Handelian bel canto, while Daniels is luxury casting indeed as the herald. (A pity that so many of Lichas' arias are cut in this version.) Owens agonizes magnificently in Hercules' death scene, a gripping tableau that makes up for the character's limited presence before then.

The production reunites Sellars with the British Baroque specialist Harry Bicket following their celebrated collaboration on Handel's "Theodora" at England's Glyndebourne Opera in 2003. The chamber orchestra plays immaculately under the conductor's 's stylish direction, with crisp continuo work from cellist Patrick Jee and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour. The choral singing - prepared by Donald Nally, in his swan song at Lyric - also is beyond reproach. The "Jealousy" chorus, addressed directly to the audience, makes a powerful close to Part One.

Deeply moving is the scene at the end when the chorus of veterans, along with ordinary citizens, gather next to the fallen Hercules' flag-draped coffin to pay their respects to his grieving widow. For some vets, on and off the stage, the pain never ends.