★★★★

“Daring and vivid one-man psychodrama”

The Guardian​

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A collaboration project with The Mancunium Consort. ​Clare Norburn’s acclaimed play with visceral music explores the last agonies of the 17th-century composer Carlo Gesualdo who, having jealously murdered his wife and her lover, poured his pain into deeply and unconventionally expressive music of torture and regret.

 

On his final living day, Carlo Gesualdo is alone in the chapel of his family estate, where he has been living as a recluse for some time. His only son and heir died two weeks earlier and Gesualdo is now coming to terms with his own mortality, knowing that he faces purgatory for the multitude of sins he has committed. Gesualdo’s consort of singers (The Mancunium Consort) are there in the chapel with him, but they are also the soundtrack of Gesualdo’s mind as he contemplates the tumultuous events that have led him to this moment.

 

The music includes several pieces from Gesualdo’s monumental Tenebrae Responsories and a selection of his madrigals. In the end, the only thing that can free him before his death is to relive and face up to what happened 23 years ago, when he murdered his first wife, Maria d’Avalos, and her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria.

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The drama is directed by BAFTA-nominated director, Nicholas Renton.

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The show originally toured 2016-2019 with The Marian Consort and actor Gerald Kyd (pictured), and is set for a revival with The Mancunium Consort in 2025.