Death of Gesualdo review – a chilling and compelling blend of beauty and horror | classical music

TCarlo Gesualdo’s story gets more twisted the closer you look at it. He was a nobleman in Renaissance Italy who murdered his wife and her lover, before locking himself in a palace with a second wife and two concubines, amid an atmosphere of flogging and suspected witchcraft. He was also a composer of acoustic music so harmoniously experimental that it still sounds as if it could be broadcast from another planet. “The Death of Gesualdo,” created by director Bill Barclay and the vocal group Gesualdo Six, tells the story through the composer’s own music, forcing us to look at it and keep searching.

Like their 2023 creation Secret Byrd, it was co-commissioned with St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the dimly lit church setting added excitement to the premiere here. The story begins in 1611, with the composer on his deathbed, and then unfolds in flashback. Gesualdo is first seen as a child represented by a doll; Then actor Marcus Weinfurter takes over. As a young man, he is given a piece of wood that could have been a cross or a sword — or a lute, we realise, thanks to a bit of air-guitar-style imitation as Gesualdo falls in love with the music, a slightly silly episode that is perhaps the only false note in the stage show.

Five other actors, as silent as Weinfurter, play the other characters in Gesualdo’s life—his wives, the jester, and the evil cardinal. Choreographed by Will Tuckett, they move around the singers with stylized gestures that reach lively tableaus; The woven music of Gesualdo’s madrigals and his responses to Tenebrae unfolds around them. Perhaps dressed in Arthur Oliver costumes, they danced out of the Italian Renaissance rooms of the National Gallery across the square. The lighting, coming largely from portable LED lights carried by the performers, bathes them in the glow of oil painting, and their poses can be subtle or extreme—when Gesualdo was caught screaming, I found myself staring at the roof of Weinfurter’s mouth for what seemed like entire minutes. Weinfurter is particularly compelling, evoking a kind of sympathy for his complex character; Or perhaps it comes from the final image when the little boy’s doll returns, innocent and incomprehensible.

And every once in a while, there’s music. Singing with precision, pure tone and precise expression, their eyes turning black as if gouged out, the Gesualdo six were impressive – all the more impressive on this occasion given that one of them was a substitute. Led by bass Owen Park, the vocals weave a spell that is broken only once, when Gesualdo, ghost-like, emerges from the dark church aisle and a split second of screams and screams announce the moment of the murder. This show is an eerie juxtaposition of beauty and horror, much like Gesualdo’s music itself.