2017/18 Artful Women Season Finale: A Day with Marie Antoinette

Ars Lyrica Houston presents A Day with Marie Antoinette Saturday, May 19 at 7:30 pm, in Zilkha Hall – Hobby Center For The Performing Arts.

Our season finale conjures up an artful day chez France’s most famous queen, from intimate morning music lessons to a spectacular evening concert.

By turns rustic and elegant, this program offers a violin concerto by Marie Antoinette’s music teacher Joseph Bologne (the Chevalier de Saint-Georges), a Mozart flute quartet, a dance suite from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, and Haydn’s “Paris” Symphony No. 85, subtitled “The Queen.”

Featured Guests & Soloists:

Cynthia Roberts, violin
Ars Lyrica Houston instrumental ensemble

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

About the 2017/18 Artful Women season:

Today’s musical world is increasingly diverse in virtually all spheres, from classical to pop. That artistic diversity encourages audiences and practitioners to reconsider ingrained habits and tastes; the art becomes newly relevant. Great Composers may still dominate the musical landscape, but lesser-known figures have made significant inroads into the repertory.

We’ve also benefitted greatly from increased scholarly and popular enthusiasm for the musical customs and practices of past eras: “period-instrument performance” began in academia but is now a global phenomenon—one that we’re delighted to share with you.

Ars Lyrica Houston has always embraced this inquisitive attitude, in programming that offers a broad mix of dramatic and chamber music from the “Golden Age” of the 17th and 18th centuries, when all music aspired toward the lyric ideal.

That trajectory continues during 2017/18 with Artful Women, a season of six subscription programs that explore women’s role as muse, heroine, composer, performer, and patron. Individual programs spotlight female musical pioneers, their particular modes of musical expression and patronage, and the enduring power of female icons from mythology and history.

From the Directors
Matthew Dirst
Artistic Director

Kinga Ferguson
Executive Director