THE HUNT, THE HAUNTED, THE GODDESS, AND THE MAGNIFICAT: THE SPLENDID VISIONS OF ARS LYRICA HOUSTON

Matthew Dirst, Artistic Director of Ars Lyrica Houston, is a wizard at thematic programming. The six programs of the early music ensemble’s 2026-27 season, Visions and Visionaries, celebrate the power of the imagination, both in the music of visionary composers and the stories they tell. “It’s a team effort. Lots of things get rejected along the way, but it’s a lot of fun to put these things together.”

The arc of the season begins and ends with opera. “We wanted to show that we are capable of putting on operatic works every year now,” says Dirst. The season opener Hunter’s Prey (Sept. 25, 2026) features two semi-staged French tragic operas, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon and three scenes from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie. With exquisite, dramatic music, Charpentier relates the Greek myth of the hunter Acteon whose accidental “vision” of the goddess Diana leads to his tragic demise. Meanwhile the lovers in Rameau’s opera enjoy a brief hunt in the forest while fleeing from a vengeful stepmother. Haute-contre Richard Pittsinger makes his Ars Lyrica debut in both works. “An haute-contre is a high tenor who can sing on the high side with great flexibility and volume control,” explains Dirst. “It’s not the same beast as an Italian countertenor, but a unique French voice type predominant in the 17th and 18th centuries. Pittsinger is an astonishing singer. It’ll be a great debut.”

Dirst is most excited about the two collaborations with the University of Houston Moores School of Music this season. The grand finale (April 16, 18/2027) will feature Handel’s 1734 opera Oreste, adapted from Euripides’s Iphigeneia in Tauris. “The opera is actually a pastiche,” explains Dirst. “Handel raided his previous works and found what are arguably his best arias and stuck them into Oreste.” This will be the opera’s Houston premiere, a collaboration with the Moores Opera Center featuring an all-student cast accompanied by the Moores School Symphony Orchestra and key players from Ars Lyrica. Moores Opera Center Artistic Director Kathleen Belcher, celebrated for her work as stage director at the Metropolitan Opera and many other renowned opera companies around the world, will weave her creative magic for this fully-staged production.

Ars Lyrica’s Christmas offering (Dec. 4, 2026) will be another collaboration with the Moores School, this time featuring its acclaimed Concert Chorale under the direction of Anthony Maglione. Bach’s Magnificat is one of Dirst’s personal favorites. The Virgin Mary, after receiving a vision that she will bear a son, sings a song of praise known in the liturgy as the Magnificat. (“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”) Bach’s masterful setting of the text moves between jubilant choruses and poignant arias, exuding immense joy and energy while eliciting intimate reflection.

The Halloween program Haunted Spirits (Oct. 31, 2026) features another exciting Ars Lyrica debut. Mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz, who have described themselves as a “queer, trans, trapeze-swinging-them-fatale,” are also a pianist, motorcycle enthusiast, and aerial acrobat. “Nikola is a phenomenon,” says Dirst. “They are a mezzo with an extraordinary range and great coloratura. They are quite gifted dramatically as well, with great agility both physically and vocally. I’m just sorry we don’t have an aerialist rig for Nikola for this show.” Printz will be singing the mad scenes from Handel’s Hercules and Alcina. In Hercules, Dejanaria betrays her husband Hercules out of jealousy, giving him a poisoned cloak that leads to his horrendous death. When she realizes what a terrible thing she has done, she goes mad. “It’s a great moment,” muses Dirst. “She’s convinced that the snakes are coming to get her, and all these devilish things and dark spirits bubble up around her.”

On the same program, superstar Baroque violinist Manami Mizumoto will let her virtuosity fly in the unaccompanied version of Tartini’s famous “Devil’s Trill” Sonata. Also on the program is Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les Élemens, which begins in utter chaos with a cluster chord where every note of the D harmonic minor scale is played simultaneously. But Dirst says the C.P.E. Bach Symphony in E Minor is actually the most chromatic and weirdest of all the works on the program. That is saying a lot for this crazy, mad, spooky Halloween show.

Viennese Dreamers (Jan. 15, 2027) brings attention to the works of Marianna Martines, a highly gifted musician and composer in Vienna during the time of Haydn and Mozart. She was lifelong friends with Haydn. Her compositions are a treasure trove waiting to be explored. Fortepianist Patricia Garcia Gil wrote her doctoral dissertation on Martines. She will be playing one of Martines’s keyboard concertos. Countertenor Key’mon Murrah, 2021 winner of Houston Grand Opera’s Concert of Arias, will sing her cantata Amor timido.

In recent years Ars Lyrica has been commissioning new works. “The idea is to have contemporary composers compose for old instruments,” explains Dirst. The centerpiece of the March program (March 6, 2027) is Soy la Diosa (I am the Goddess), words and music by Nicaraguan American composer Gilda Lyons. In her own words, “I receive like heirlooms the stories and images that sprang from the need to understand: If we are ephemeral, can we also be eternal?” The composer chases a vision that “speaks to the mystery around and within each of us.”

—SHERRY CHENG