Fanfare 3
***** This compelling work roasts mad Gesualdo and his mad madrigals on a spit turning over the fires of hell.

Many readers will know the name of Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613), the Italian nobleman and composer who is remembered particularly for his six books of madrigals (over a hundred in all) and for his messy personal life. Specifically, when he was 24, he caught his wife in flagrante delicto with another nobleman, and Gesualdo killed both of them immediately, even mutilating their bodies to ensure that they were really dead. He was acquitted of any crime, and eventually remarried. His second marriage was not particularly happy, but at least he did not murder her. He spent the rest of his life suffering from guilt and outright mental illness. His servants were compelled by him to beat him daily. To be fair, there are historians who feel that Gesualdo’s psychopathology has been exaggerated for dramatic effect. Nevertheless, nowadays it is usual for commentators to hear Gesualdo’s pain in his chromatically anguished and hyper-expressive madrigals, and also in sacred works such as his Tenebræ Responsoria.
Peter Navarro-Alonso’s In flagrante delicto is a musical exploration of Gesualdo’s tortured psyche in which quotations, some extensive and sometimes fragmented, from the Italian composer’s madrigals have been woven and embellished into an hour-long multi-movement vocal work including an instrumental ensemble of oboe, violin, cello, and piano. The works tilts in the direction of madness, becoming more extreme in its expressivity, and more dissonant and avant-garde in its musical language as it continues. There also are moments of clarity, which are touching and not untrue to the nature of mental illness. Overall, the work is in two parts. The first part, in four sections, reworks Gesualdo’s madrigals in a way that retains at least a part of their familiarity. (Appreciating this work does not depend on knowing the original works, but it probably helps.) The second part, in five sections, goes more deeply off the deep end, as it were, and it is in this second part that Navarro-Alonso’s skill at depicting the spiritual toll taken by murder and madness is even more evident. Gesualdo’s music remains, but Navarro-Alonso assails and torments it with shrill instrumental dissonances and singing that seems to have come out of a madhouse, if not out of Hell itself. (Gesualdo’s mention of a mosquito in one of his madrigals conjures up a veritable swarm of biting, stinging insects, imitated by the voices, in Navarro-Alonso’s imagination.) There also is a section that makes appropriate use of the La follia tune, at first moving and then diabolically mocking. In flagrante delicto is not for nervous listeners, then, nor is it subtle, but it probably is terrifying when performed live, and it is unnerving here, just the thing for Halloween, perhaps.
Paul Hillier and Ensemble Stralo’s violinist, Christina Åstrand, were involved in the creation of this work, and their performances here are definitive, at least until other musicians try their hand and voice at In flagrante delicto! This is a work in which the five members (here) of Theatre of Voices are expected to act with their singing voices, and their involvement in the work’s drama is total. The recorded sound is immediate and full in its impact. My only suggestion is that the booklet could have included more information about Gesualdo’s madrigals, should listeners want to dive into them more deeply. Raymond Tuttle, 20 October 2025