A jealous composer who happens to be a prince catches his wife and her lover in flagrante and butchers them to death, mutilating the corpses. The lover, moreover, was a cross-dresser who had been wearing a woman’s nightdress with fringes and ruffs of black silk. It all sounds positively operatic and indeed the story of Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, has been made into operas, novels and films.
The latest working of the material is the production of Bill Barclay, co-commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields, with the National Centre for Early Music and Music Before 1800 (NYC). Featuring the vocal ensemble The Gesualdo Six – immaculately voiced as ever – alongside half a dozen actors, together with puppetry, it enacts a series of tableaux vivants incorporating iconography from Renaissance painting.
