Mythological tales abound in Ars Lyrica Houston’s 2025-26 season, and no wonder. A season titled “Twists of Fate” is perfect for exploring the dramatic turns and emotional heft of these timeless stories told through music.
For its season finale, Ars Lyrica will present a fully staged production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607), widely regarded as the first masterpiece in the opera genre. Other dramatic highlights throughout the season include Haydn’s cantata Arianna a Naxos and Handel’s Italian serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, a rarely performed earlier setting of his better known English masque on the same subject. The French Baroque is represented by a pair of petits tragédies, Louis-Nicolas Clérambault’s Léandre et Héro and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Orphée. Greek tragedies may dominate the season, but Bach’s comedic voice shines in the musical drama The Dispute between Phoebus and Pan, which will open the season in the form of a thrilling singing contest.
“The theme occurred to us after a few pieces of the puzzle were in place,” says Matthew Dirst, Artistic Director of Ars Lyrica. “We started thinking out Orfeo over a year ago, and I wanted to bring back Phoebus and Pan which we did nearly 20 years ago and had planned for May of 2020. We had to scrub that [due to the pandemic]. So it’s been sitting out there saying ‘please put me back on the stage.’” Once the bookends were in place, Dirst was able to plan an entire season centered around mythological tales.
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Ars Lyrica Houston Artistic Director Matthew Dirst leads the ensemble in a semi-staged production of Handel’s final oratorio, Theodora, performed at Zilkha Hall in March 2025. Photo by Lynn Lane.
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Fortepianist Patricia García Gil and Baroque violinist Cynthia Roberts share the stage during Classical Collaborations, Ars Lyrica’s 2024/25 season finale celebrating Classical-era women composers. Photo by Pin Lim.
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Soprano Lauren Snouffer (Clori), countertenor Key’mon Murrah (Tirsi), and contralto Cecelia McKinley (Fileno) star in Ars Lyrica’s vibrant production of Handel’s pastoral chamber opera. Photo by Lynn Lane.
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Ars Lyrica’s acclaimed collaboration with the New York Baroque Dance Company brought Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to life through historically informed staging and movement. Photo by Lynn Lane.
The piece is in essence an argument about so-called high and low art and who should judge it. Bach shows a great sense of humor in this comic cantata, lavishing as much attention on Phoebus’s gorgeous aria as he does on Pan’s rustic romp. “He is also addressing his critics,” adds Dirst. “Bach was criticized for writing essentially turgid church music, so he’s showing he can do both well.”
Haydn’s solo cantata Arianna a Naxos (1789) is the ideal vehicle for showcasing the voice of mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner in her Ars Lyrica debut. Wagner is a distinguished alumna of the Houston Grand Opera Studio who recently made her Met Opera debut in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. “Erin is wonderfully imaginative,” says Dirst. “She really connects with the text. Her voice is smoky, lyric, and fulsome, a full mezzo who is brilliant on top and rich and sonorous on the bottom.”
Haydn’s cantata encapsulates the emotional turmoil of the Greek heroine Ariadne, who was cruelly abandoned by her lover Theseus on the island of Naxos. In two pairs of alternating recitatives and arias, Haydn’s Ariadne embarks on a psychological journey from fear to anger, grief to devastating love, through music that captures the high drama with fitting intensity and poignancy. As a contrast, Houston composer David Ashley White’s meditative song cycle The Peace of Wild Things, based on poems by Wendell Berry, will also be featured on the same program with Wagner as soloist.
The beguiling sensuality of the French Baroque makes for a felicitous Valentine’s Day offering. Ars Lyrica favorite Nola Richardson returns to sing in two solo cantatas for soprano and orchestra, Clérambault’s Léandre et Héro and Rameau’s Orphée. As for style, “French Baroque music is not as process oriented,” explains Dirst. “It’s more indulgent on the musical surface, with lots of curlicues and little expressive turns. It’s much more about the sensuality, and less about a process like counterpoint. The ornamentation is idiosyncratically French, with lots of appoggiaturas and trills.”
A decade before Handel composed his better-known English masque Acis and Galatea, he penned an Italian serenata on the same subject titled Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. Ars Lyrica will be presenting the Houston premiere of this rarely heard early Handel masterpiece. So why did he write two versions of this story? “We don’t really know,” says Dirst. “These are two completely different pieces. There is not any kind of musical borrowing at all.”
In Ovid’s retelling of the Greek myth, the lovers Acis and Galatea contend with the cyclops Polyphemus, whose lust for Galatea leads to Acis’s death and eventual transformation into a river. The earlier Handel work is rarely performed partly because of significant vocal challenges in the score. “The real trouble is the role of Polyphemus,” explains Dirst. “It is written for an extraordinary bass baritone who can go from a low D to a high A in the space of a bar and a half, an enormous range. So you need someone who has those notes, and that is Douglas Williams. He is one of the few who has them.”
As with many of Handel’s early Italian pieces, this serenata is highly virtuosic for all the musicians, both the singers and the orchestra. In comparison to the later work, Dirst describes this piece as much more “straightforwardly violent,” at least in its use of musical imagery. Polyphemus is full of lustful jealous rage, not merely a laughable monster, as portrayed in Handel’s later version. “He is much more of a demon, a typical powerful man.”
The tragic story of Orpheus’s attempted rescue of Eurydice from the underworld wins the prize for the Greek myth most frequently set to music. Because of its inherent theme of the power of music to transform, the ancient tale has captivated composers throughout the centuries and inspired numerous masterpieces, Monteverdi’s Orfeo being the first.
“It’s known as the first great opera,” says Dirst. “We’re basically doing it as Monteverdi might have done it in Mantua in 1607. That is to say with a dozen or so singers, almost all singing multiple roles, and six to eight dancers.” Ars Lyrica’s fully-staged production, in collaboration with the New York Baroque Dance Company, will be directed and choreographed by its longtime Artistic Director Catherine Turocy. The phenomenal Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulyman, winner of the 2019 Best Classical Solo Vocal Grammy award, will be making his Ars Lyrica debut as the title character.
So what makes this opera so special? “Monteverdi is doing things nobody ever did before,” says Dirst. “He did not necessarily invent recitative or monody, but he used it in a profoundly expressive way, unlike any of his contemporaries.” Dirst points to one particularly poignant moment in the opera, when Orpheus stands at the gates of Hades to plead his case. “He sings an incredibly elaborate aria that’s full of astonishing embellishments and the instruments do the same around him in elaborate arabesques.” Monteverdi wrote out all the embellishments, which is highly unusual for the time. In the nearly 10-minute long aria “Possente spirto,” he unveils the magic as Orpheus takes up his lyre and moves the gatekeepers of hell to release Eurydice. Prepare to be moved and transfixed.
—SHERRY CHENG
