Before the start of Heartbeat Opera’s production of Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” which opened on Wednesday at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in Manhattan, Louisa Proske, who conceived and co-directed the staging, told the audience that the mission of this small but ambitious company was to present “radical adaptations” of familiar works.

On that count, this inventive “Freischütz” delivered. The story was shifted from a rustic community in mid-1600s Bohemia to a town in contemporary Texas. Yet the updating was actually the least radical element.

“Der Freischütz,” which loosely translates as “The Marksman” and runs at Baruch through Dec. 14, takes place in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. It is a culture in which hunting and marksmanship are rituals of manhood; where rowdy gatherings at the local tavern and sentimental paeans to healthy rural life go hand in hand; and where citizens are prone to superstition and see evil forces at work everywhere.