Skip to main contentSkip to navigation Close dialogue1/2 Next image Previous image Toggle captionSkip to navigation The church setting adds extra frisson … Death of Gesualdo at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian View image in fullscreen The church setting adds extra frisson … Death of Gesualdo at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian ReviewDeath of Gesualdo review – a creepy and compelling combination of beauty and horror St Martin-in-the-Fields, LondonThe twisted life and sublime music of the murderous Renaissance composer is examined with style The story of Carlo Gesualdo gets more twisted the closer you look at it. He was a nobleman in Renaissance Italy who murdered his wife and her lover, before shutting himself away in a palace with a second wife and two concubines, amid an atmosphere of flagellation and suspected witchcraft. He was also the composer of vocal music so harmonically experimental that it still sounds as if it could almost be beamed in from another planet. Death of Gesualdo, created by the director Bill Barclay and vocal group the Gesualdo Six, tells the story to the composer’s own music, compelling us to look at it and keep on looking.Like their 2023 creation Secret Byrd, it was co-commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the dimly lit church setting lent an extra frisson to its premiere here. It…
Published: January 18, 2026 1:25 pm
Source: The Guardian — Read original