NAVARRO-ALONSO In Flagrante Delicto
Peter Navarro-Alonso must have worn a knowingly wicked smile when he composed In flagrante delicto. Both reassuring and unsettling, his music occupies an ambiguous space between homage and parody, humour and pathos – what Freud called Das Unheimliche (‘the uncanny’).
Best known for his inventive reworkings of classics such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Navarro-Alonso’s music revels in subjecting familiar material to radical interventions and disruptions. His latest work for vocal and instrumental ensemble turns to another Italian composer: Carlo Gesualdo.
Beyond the infamous tale of Gesualdo murdering his wife and her lover (in flagrante delicto), little is known about the man himself. What survives most vividly is his music, extraordinary for its time, harmonically daring and emotionally charged. This elusiveness grants Navarro-Alonso artistic freedom to reinterpret both the composer’s life and legacy.
As in Gesualdo’s own music, boundaries are pushed and tested. In In flagrante delicto, short excerpts from Renaissance madrigals illuminate the psychotic impulses behind Gesualdo’s brutal act. Like a camera shifting focus, we become voyeurs to the unfolding horror: the secret trysts, the discovery, the revenge. The musical mise en scène constantly changes perspective – from the grim, descending chords of ‘Moro, lasso’ that frames the cycle to Lachenmann-like violent clashes and extended techniques in ‘Beltà, poi che t’assenti’. Elsewhere, a visceral grinding bass in ‘Gorgogliante’ underpins edgy vocal lines in the manner of Louis Andriessen.
This hour-long cycle certainly puts the ‘mad’ in madrigal. Yet, amid the darkness, there are moments of startling beauty. ‘Io pur respiro’ starts as a serene homage to Arvo Pärt before morphing seamlessly into Gesualdo’s own setting, while ‘Tranquillo (La folia)’ emerges from the chaos with a purity resembling Carissimi’s Jepthe.
Amid the physical and mental carnage, Navarro-Alonso astonishingly preserves the spirit of the original. Gesualdo’s harmonies and obsessions are absorbed into the very fabric of the Danish-Spanish composer’s voice, in a kind of beautifully twisted assimilation. Theatre of Voices, directed by Paul Hillier, together with Ensemble Stralo, admirably rise to the challenge in a poised and perfectly executed performance of this dramatic, disturbing yet strangely captivating work. Author: Pwyll ap Siôn, Gramophone January 2026
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/navarro-alonso-in-flagrante-delicto