"Carlo Gesualdo wrote some of the most darkly sublime music of the late Renaissance. He also savagely murdered his wife and her lover in their bed. Now be honest: which would you like to discuss first? The art will always be secondary to the atrocity, however magnificent the madrigals and sacred music. Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, had been cuckolded by the Duke of Andria in a long-running tryst that had become the scuttlebutt at court."
"The premeditated double murder of 1590 was a truly grisly affair, concluding in the public display of their mutilated bodies on the steps of the palazzo for several days. Gesualdo's biography is often reduced to this act, yet his own end, too, was harrowing. Twenty years on, the prince had retreated to his estate to indulge in a life of ritualistic agony, reportedly employing servants to beat him thrice daily to ease sleep and constipation. This domestic nightmare included the presence of two concubines accused by his second wife of witchcraft against him."
Carlo Gesualdo produced intensely chromatic madrigals and sacred music during the late Renaissance while also committing a premeditated double murder in 1590, killing his wife and her lover and displaying their mutilated bodies publicly. He later retreated to his estate, adopting ritualistic self-punishments and employing servants to beat him daily to relieve sleep and constipation. His household descended into accusations of witchcraft, with two concubines tortured into confessing. The Gesualdo Six ensemble took his name and performed his repertoire, and a new music-theatre piece titled Death of Gesualdo was commissioned for St Martin-in-the-Fields' tercentenary.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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