HUNTER'S PREY to Open Ars Lyrica Houston Season With Richard Pittsinger Debut
The program at the Hobby Center includes Charpentier's Actéon and scenes from Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie.
Ars Lyrica Houston opens its 2026/27 season, Visions & Visionaries, on Friday, September 25 in Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center with Hunter's Prey, a program of musical depictions of the hunt — a favorite pastime with potentially lethal consequences. The program opens with Marc-Antoine Charpentier's chamber opera Actéon, continues with Johann David Heinichen's Concerto in F Major, and closes with scenes from Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie.
Charpentier's Actéon tells the tale of a hunter whose brief vision of Diana — the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon — proves fatal: he catches a forbidden glimpse of her bathing and pays for it with his life, transformed into a stag and killed by his own hounds. Tenor Richard Pittsinger praised by The New York Times for his “winning singing and youthful bearing” makes his Ars Lyrica debut in the title role and is joined by soprano Alicia Gianni as Diana, whose performance as Rosalba in Houston Grand Opera's Florencia en el Amazonas drew acclaim from Houstonia Magazine for her “pearly clarity and sweetness.”
Heinichen's Concerto in F Major follows, spotlighting the horns and oboes, instruments that represented the hunt during the baroque, before the program closes with scenes from Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, which relates the story of two lovers who, while fleeing a vengeful stepmother, enjoy a brief hunt in the forest. Pittsinger returns for this final work alongside soprano Andréa Walker, hailed by the Washington Classical Review as “luminous” and “ethereal,” in the role of Aricie.
Paige Rogers directs the semi-staged production of Actéon, with a cast that also includes soprano Amia Langer, mezzo-sopranos Cecilia Duarte and Sarah Dyer-Jones, tenors Gabriel Chona and Thomas O'Neill, and baritones Daniel Boyd and Jacob De Sett.
“The hunt has always been more than sport,” says Artistic Director Matthew Dirst. “For dedicated practitioners, the hunt is also spectacle — thrilling, dangerous, and deeply symbolic. Three works, three visions of the hunt, and underneath them all, the same essential truth: beauty and danger are never very far apart.”
Hunter's Prey
Friday, September 9th at 7:30 PM
Zilkha Hall, Hobby Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring
- Richard Pittsinger, tenor
- Alicia Gianni, soprano
- Amia Langer, soprano
- Andréa Walker, soprano
- Cecilia Duarte, mezzo-soprano
- Sarah Dyer-Jones, mezzo-soprano
- Gabriel Chona, tenorThomas O'Neill, tenor
- Daniel Boyd, baritone
- Jacob De Sett, baritone
- Paige Rogers, stage director
Tickets
Full 6-concert subscriptions ($225–$435) and 4-concert subscriptions ($150–$290) are on sale now at the Hobby Center website. Single tickets go on sale August 24th, ranging $40–$80 depending on seating tier; student tickets are $15. Concerts also stream live and on demand via our Baroque Digital Hall.
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